The Spanish conquerors

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56767

March 1958
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0271163

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THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

MM 51958

EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED EDITION

VOLUME 2
THE CHRONICLES
OF AMERICA SERIES
ALLEN JOHNSON
EDITOR

GERHARD R. LOMER
CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
ASSISTANT EDITORS

GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

Of TOC OWfiCH Of JESUS CHRIST
Of UTTtt-OAY SAMIS

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THE

SPANISH CONQUERORS

A CHRONICLE OF THE
DAWN OF EMPIRE OVERSEAS
BY IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN

NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO.
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1920

Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press

CONTENTS

I.

WEST AND EAST

Page 1

II.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

“ 13

III.

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

“ 64

IV.

CORTES AND MEXICO

“ 91

V.

SPANISH CONQUERORS IN CENTRAL
AMERICA

“ 139

VI.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

“ 154

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

“ 217

INDEX

“ 225

vii

'

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Painting in the Marine Museum, Madrid, re-
produced in Avery’s History of the United States.

No portrait of Columbus is known to have
been painted from life or during his lifetime. Of
the supposed portraits now existing, the earliest
is a wood engraving in Elogia Virorum Illustrium,
by Paulus Jovius, published in 1575. This is
said to have been copied from a painting in a
collection of portraits at the Villa of Jovius on
Lake Como. The collection has been dispersed,
and the Columbus portrait (if it ever existed)
has disappeared. This woodcut doubtless was
the model for an engraving by Aliprando Cap-
riolo, published in Rome in 1596. On these
two engravings have been based the greater
number of the many imaginary portraits of
Columbus.

Two other portraits of considerable antiquity
are known. The Florence Gallery contains a
painting attributed to Cristofano dell’ Altissi-
mo, said to be of a date earlier than 1568. A
copy of this portrait was made for Thomas
Jefferson in 1784, and is now in the collection of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
The National Library, Madrid, possesses the
oldest canvas representing Columbus known to
exist in Spain. This is the so-called Yanez por-
trait, which was purchased in 1763 and named
in honor of its former owner.

IX

X

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Marine Museum portrait, here repro-
duced, was painted probably sometime in the
nineteenth century, and is evidently a composite,
based on these early likenesses, and on data as
to the personal appearance of Columbus gath-
ered from his biographers. Though it pos-
sesses no claim to authenticity, it is probably
the most satisfactory representation of the
Columbus of imagination and tradition.

The subject is discussed fully in Volume n
of Justin Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History
of America. Frontispiece

THE BEHAIM GLOBE OF 1492

From the atlas accompanying K. Kretschmer’s
Die Entdeckung Amerikas in ihrer Bedeutung fur
die Geschichte des Weltbildes, Berlin, 1892. Page 12

THE FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS. 1492-
1503

Based upon the map in Bourne’s Spain in
America, American Nation Series, Volume in.

New York, 1904, Harper. Facing page 50

BALBOA TAKING POSSESSION OF THE PA-
CIFIC OCEAN. Engraving in Herrera’s Historia
General.

PONCE DE LEON IN FLORIDA. Engraving in

Herrera’s Historia General. “ “ 82

HERNANDO CORTES

Painting by an unknown artist. In the Hospi-
tal de Jesus, City of Mexico. This portrait is
said to have been presented to the Hospital by
Cortes himself. “ “ 98

ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

MAP OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF MEX-
ICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Prepared by W. L. G. Joerg of the American
Geographical Society. Facing page HJf.

MAP OF PIZARRO’S CONQUEST OF PERU,

1531-1533

Prepared by W. L. G. Joerg of the American
Geographical Society. “ “ 162

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

CHAPTER I

WEST AND EAST

Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region
in the neighborhood of the Pillars of Hercules [Spain] with that to-
wards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not
assert things very improbable. — Aristotle: De Ccelo, n, 14.

The Spaniard of the fifteenth century is recog-
nizable by well-defined traits: he was primitive,
he was proud, he was devout, and he was romantic.
His primitiveness we detect in his relish for blood
and suffering; his pride in his austerity and exclu-
siveness; his devoutness in his mystical exaltation
of the Church; and his romanticism in his passion
for adventure.

After printing had spread in Spain, the roman-
ticism of the Spaniard — to confine our observa-
tions for the present to that trait — was fostered

by a wealth of books. Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin

l

2

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of England, The Exploits of Esplandidn, Don Beli-
anis — all these works were filled with heroes,
queens, monsters, and enchantments; and all, it
is needless to remark, held an honored place upon
the shelves of Miguel de Cervantes, that Span-
ish romanticist par excellence, the author of Don
Quixote.

But prior to 1500, or down to 1492, let us say,
the romanticism of the Spaniard, like that of other
Europeans, was ministered to not so much by
books as by tales passed from mouth to mouth:
tales originating with seamen and reflected in the
names on mariners’ charts; and tales by landsmen
recorded in the relations, reports, and letters of
missionaries, royal envoys, and itinerant merchants.

To the west of Spain stretched the Atlantic
Ocean, and in the Atlantic the lands most remote
were the Canaries, the Madeiras, the Cape Verde
Group, and the Azores. What was beyond the
Canaries, the Madeiras, the Cape Verde Group,
and the Azores? To this the answer was : “Naught
so far as known, save the Atlantic itself — the
Mare Tenebrosum or Sea of Darkness; a sea so
called for the very reason that within it lies
hid whatever land there may be beyond these
islands.”

WEST AND EAST

3

"West of Ireland but east of the longitude of
the Azores, seamen said, was to be found the is-
land of Brazil; west of the Canaries and also
west of the longitude of the Azores, the great is-
land of Antiilia; and southwest of the Cape Verde
Group, at an indeterminate distance, the island of
St. Brandan. Concerning Brazil, except that the
name signified red or orange-colored dyewood, par-
ticulars were lacking; but Antiilia — the “island
over against,” the “island opposite” — had been
the refuge, had it not, of the Iberian Goths after
their defeat by the Moors; and here two Arch-
bishops of Oporto, with five bishops, had founded
seven cities. St. Brandan, too, was the subject of
somewhat specific affirmation; for in quest of this
island had not St. Brandan, Abbot of Ailach, in
the sixth century put fearlessly to sea with a band
of monks?

Nor were the islands mentioned all of those for
which seamen vouched. There were, besides, Isla
de Mam (Man Island); Salvagio (Savage Island),
alias La Man de Satanaxio (Hand of Satan) ; Insula
in Mar (Island in the Sea) ; Reyella (King Island) ;
and various others. Some of these islands, it was
surmised, must be the abode of life; if not life of the
type of the hydras and gorgons of antiquity, at least

4

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of a type extramundane and weird — of Amazons,
of men with tails, of “ anthropophagi and men whose
heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” of crouch-
ing Calibans, of mermaids, and of singing ariels.

And, amid uncertainties respecting Antiilia and
her protean sisterhood, one certainty stood out:
in considerable numbers these islands had figured
boldly on marine charts of accepted authority,
from the famed “Catalan” of 1375 to the “Bec-
caria” of 1435, and the “Benincasas” of 1463,
1476, and 1482.

Noteworthy as were the yarns spun by seamen
in the fifteenth century, tales circulated by lands-
men — by missionaries, royal envoys, and mer-
chants — were more noteworthy still. But these
missionaries and other landsmen, whither did they
fare? In what quarter did they adventure? Not
in the West, for that was the seaman’s realm,
but in the East these travelers had their domain.
The chief potentate in all Asia, so Europe be-
lieved, was Prester John, a Christian and a rich
man. To find him or some equivalent of him,
and bring him into helpful relationship with
Christian but distracted Europe, became the am-
bition of Popes and secular rulers alike. Hence

WEST AND EAST 5

the missionaries. Hence Friar John of Pian de
Carpine and Friar William of Rubruck, who from
1245 to 1253 penetrated central Asia to Karako-
rum. Hence, furthermore, John of Monte Corvino,
Odoric of Pordenone, and John of Marignolli,
who, as friars and papal legates from 1275 to
1353, visited Persia, India, the Malay Archi-
pelago, China, and even Thibet.

The tales these landsmen brought were good
to hear — “pretty to hear tell,” as Friar Odoric
puts it. First, there was Cathay: Cathay of the
Mongol plains, with its kaans or emperors housed
in tents, twanging guitars, and disdainful of all
mankind; Cathay of the “Ocean Sea” with ports
thronged with ships and wharves glutted with cost-
ly wares ; Cathay of the city of Kinsay — “ stretched
like Paradise through the breadth of Heaven” —
with lake, canals, bridges, pleasure barges, baths,
and lights-o’-love; Cathay of imperial Cambulac
with its Palace of the Great Kaan, its multitude of
crowned barons in silken robes, its magic golden
flagons, its troops of splendid white mares, its as-
trologers, leeches, conjurers, and choruses of girls
with “cheeks as full as the moon,” who by their
“sweet singing” pleased Friar Odoric (ah, Friar!)
most of all.

6

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Then there was India, including Cipangu or
Japan with its “rose colored pearls” and gold
“abundant beyond all measure”; India of the
“twenty-four hundred islands and sixty-four
crowned kings”; India of the ruby, the sapphire,
and the diamond; of the Moluccas drowsy with
perfumes and rich in drugs and spices ; of the golden
temples and the uncouth gods; of the eunuchs and
the ivory; the beasts, the serpents, and the brilliant
birds. Other tales there were, brought by these
landsmen, the missionaries. Just as the West had
its Sea of Darkness — the Atlantic Ocean — so
the East had its Land of Darkness — the extreme
northeast of Asia, a region of mountain and sand,
of cold and snow, where dwelt the Gog and Magog
of Ezekiel. And to reach this dark land, barriers
must be overcome, defiles fierce with demoniac
winds, deserts swathed in mystic light and vibrant
to jigging tunes, valleys awful with dead men’s
bones.

Moreover, as in the West the mythical islands
of the Dark Sea were the abode of creatures be-
yond the thought of man, so in the East the Dark
Land harbored beings quite as preternatural.
Here, co-tenants, so to speak, of Gog and Magog,
were the Cynocephalse or dog-headed creatures;

WEST AND EAST 7

the Parocitae so narrow mouthed as to be forced
to subsist exclusively on odors; jointless hopping
creatures who cried “chin chin”; one-eyed crea-
tures; midget creatures; and what not. “I was
told,” says Friar Rub ruck, “that there is a prov-
ince beyond Cathay and at whatever age a man
enters it that age he keeps which he had on enter-
ing — which,” naively exclaims the friar, “I do not
believe.” Odoric had far more hardihood in narra-
tive, for, speaking of India, he notes: “I heard
tell that there be trees which bear men and women
like fruit upon them . . . [These people] are
fixed in the tree up to the navel and there they be;
when the wind blows they be fresh, but when it
does not blow they are all dried up. This I saw
not in sooth, but I heard it told by people who had
seen it.”

As a skeptic among tale-bringers from the East,
however, John of Marignolli ranks foremost. A
Paradise on earth still somewhere existing; an
Adam’s footprint in Ceylon; a Noah’s Ark still
on Ararat — such things were verities to him ; but
not so preternatural creatures. “The truth is,”
he declares, “no such people do exist as nations,
though there may be an individual monster here
and there.” Indeed, so adventurous in skepticism

8

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

is John that in some particulars he o’erleaps
himself. “There are,” he avers, “no Antipodes —
men having the soles of their feet opposite to ours.
Certainly not.” He has learned too, “by sure
experience,” that “if the ocean be divided by two
lines forming a cross, two of the quadrants so re-
sulting are navigable and the two others not navi-
gable at all, for God willed not that men should
be able to sail round the whole world.”

So far as missionaries were concerned, the East
might lure them to Cathay, or even to farthest
India, through interest in some shadowy Prester
John, an interest largely of a religious nature; but
it was otherwise with royal envoys and merchants.
The lure of the East for them was treasure and
merchandise, in other words, wealth. As early
as 1165-67, a Spanish Jew of Navarre, Rabbi Ben-
jamin by name, who was concerned in trade, set
forth from Tudela, his native city, and visiting
Saragossa, Genoa, Constantinople, Tyre, Damas-
cus, Bagdad, and points in Arabia, reached the
island of Kish and the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
at the gates of India and within earshot of Cathay.
He was the first modern European, it is said, “to
as much as mention China.”

Nearly a century later (1254) appeared the

WEST AND EAST

9

royal traveler Heythum I, King of Lesser Armenia,
on a visit to Mangu Kaan at Karakorum. Then
in 1275 came Marco Polo, son and nephew of
traders bred in the commercial traditions of Ven-
ice, and himself the first European of parts to tell
of the splendors of the Great Kaan. Polo’s most
interesting successor (1325-55) was an Arab man
of the world, gay, selfish, sensuous, and observing,
Ibn Batuta. Batuta journeyed deviously from Mo-
rocco to Cathay and India. Thence he leisurely
returned to his native Tangier by way of Spain;
and as he strolled he sang:

Of all the Four Quarters of Heaven the best

(I’ll prove it past question) is surely the West.1

To these landsmen, the envoys and merchants,
the lure of the East was wealth. It was silks : silks
of Gilan; taffetas of Shiraz, Yezd, and Serpi; “sen-
dels of grene and broun”; cloth of gold, gold bro-

1 In the fifteenth century two travelers gained celebrity by their
narrations : one a Spanish Knight, Ruy Gonzalez of Clavijo; the other
a Venetian merchant, Nicolo de’ Conti. Gonzalez in 1403 went from
Spain, by way of the eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas, which
Genoa controlled, to represent Henry III of Castile before Tamerlane
the Great at Samarcand — “silken Samarcand” — in Mongolia;
while Conti, retracing in part the steps of Rabbi Benjamin, passed
(1419-1444) to the mouth of the Persian Gulf and on into the Malay
Archipelago.

10

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

cades; silver gauze; silks and satins of Su-Chau;
cramoisy; fabrics wrought in beasts, birds, trees,
and flowers. It was also gold: ingots of gold;
beaten gold; gold and silver plate; gold pillars and
lamps; gold coronets and headdresses; gold arm-
lets and anklets; gold girdles, cinctures, censers,
cups, and basins.

Pearls, too, of “beautiful water” and gems, es-
pecially of India, made part of this wealth. Said
Ibn Batuta: “Men at Kish descend to the bed of
the sea [the Persian Gulf] by ropes and collect
shellfish, then split them and extract the pearls.”
Again he said: “I traversed the bazar of the
jewelers at Tabriz, and my eyes were dazzled by
the variety of precious stones which I beheld.
Handsome slaves, superbly dressed, and girdled
with silk, offered their gems for sale to the Tartar
ladies who bought great numbers.”

But of all this wealth — so luring in the fact, so
alluring in the recital — the chief items were aro-
matics and spices: sandalwood, aloewood, spike-
nard, frankincense, civet, and musk; rhubarb,
nutmegs, mace, cloves, ginger, pepper, and cinna-
mon. And of spices one stood preeminent —
pepper. Rabbi Benjamin was of his time when he
said that “two parasangs from the Sea of Sodom is

WEST AND EAST

11

the Pillar of Salt into which Lot’s wife was turned ” ;
but he was for subsequent times, as well, when he
described the pearls and pepper. To the heat of
pepper land, Malabar, a Persian ambassador to
India once bore witness in the statement that so
intense was this heat that “it burned the ruby in
the mine and the marrow in the bones,” to say
naught of “melting the sword in the scabbard like
wax.” But this by the way. Pepper it was, the
spice which in ancient days had formed part of
the ransom of Rome from Alaric, that throughout
the Middle Ages and far into the fifteenth century
constituted in Europe the commodity most prized
and talked of, for it was the one most costly, the
one closest to gold in intrinsic worth.

Prior to 1492, then, the romanticism of the
Spaniard, as of other Europeans, was stirred by
tales of the West and tales of the East — tales by
seamen and tales by landsmen — and these in the
main were circulated by word of mouth. Fur-
thermore, so potent were these stories that, even
when ascribed to mere weavers of dreams, they
would not be denied and could not be ignored.
And, in the minds of two or three persons, they
begat the old question of Aristotle: “Might not
the Ocean Sea, which bordered Cathay and held

12

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Cipangu, be one with the Sea of Darkness which
lay west of Europe and held Antiilia? ”

After Kretschmer

CHAPTER II

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

. . . for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars. . . .

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.

Tennyson: Ulysses.

Among sojourners in Spain, prior to 1492, there
was a Genoese, by name Christopher Columbus.
He was tall and well-built, of dignified mien, with
red hair and beard, a long ruddy face, clear gray
eyes, and aquiline nose. To inferiors his manner
was exacting and brusque, to equals it was urbane,
and to superiors it was courtly. His figure showed
to advantage, whereof he was not unduly aware,
and he evinced a taste for yellow in beads and for
crimson and scarlet in caps, cloaks, and shoes.

Unlike the Spaniards, whom he was to lead,
Columbus was not in disposition primitive; he
had no relish for blood and suffering. He was,

13

14

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

however, proud, with a measure of austerity; and
he was highly romantic and strikingly devout.

His most signal powers, and they were signal
indeed, were moral powers. In patience, endur-
ance, tenacity, energy, will — powers which, far
more than those distinctively intellectual, make for
greatness — the world has rarely known his equal.
Imagination, too, he possessed, rich and ardent,
and it rendered him poetic, eloquent, and persua-
sive. But, just as he possessed the qualities named,
so likewise he possessed the defects of them. He
was masterful and imaginative, but his master-
fulness tended to ungenerousness and his imagina-
tion to vagary and mischievous exaggeration. Nor
was this all. His moral powers were largely de-
termined in exercise by two positive principles of
action which were undeniably sinister — vanity
and cupidity — and under stress of these he be-
came at times dissimulating, boastful, and crafty.
It is probable, however, that the sinister in him
has by recent writers been somewhat over-magni-
fied. Throughout everything he was sincerely and
enthusiastically religious. To him, as to others of
Machiavellian strain, the end justified many means
but not all, though among the justified means were
those of guile.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

15

According to the findings of the most recent
scholarship, Christopher Columbus, the eldest in
a family of four sons and one daughter,1 was born
at Genoa on a date between August 26 and Octo-
ber 31, 1451. His grandfather probably, and his
father certainly, was a wool-dealer and weaver; and
the latter at one time also conducted a wine-shop.
None of his progenitors had place or rank, and his
sister married a cheesemonger. There were other
persons in Europe in his time of the sobriquet
“ Columbus, ” one of whom, William of Caseneuve,
was a corsair and vice-admiral of France under
Louis XI; and with these Christopher Columbus,
about 1501, sought to indicate relationship by the
remark that “he was not the first admiral in his
family.” But the claim, so far as can be ascer-
tained, was wanting in foundation.

The education of Christopher was of the most
elementary sort. It consisted merely of what was
provided by a school maintained by the weavers’
guild of the town of his birth, in a little street called
Pavia Lane. How meager his first advantages were,
appears in the fact that at no time in life did he as-
sume to write his mother tongue, Italian, not even
when addressing the Bank of St. George in Genoa.

1 Christopher, Bartholomew, Giovanni, Diego, and Bianchinetta.

16 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

We have seen that as a man Columbus was both
vigorous of body and imaginative of mind. For
him, therefore, as a lad in Genoa — the Genoa of
our travelers, Rabbi Benjamin, Marco Polo, and
Ibn Batuta — to develop a taste for the sea was
more natural than not. In fact, he tells us that
from his fourteenth year he was accustomed to em-
bark on ships. But in 1472, when he was twenty-
one years old, he declared before a notary that he
was by trade a weaver. We may suppose then that
up to this period his seafaring was tentative or in
the nature of a youth’s adventures; thereafter it
became more and more an occupation.

In Genoa, at this time, dwelt two noblemen with
whom Columbus seems to have been on terms of
friendship. He went with them in 1475 to the
island of Chios in the iEgean, where he obtained a
shipment of malmsey wine, and became familiar
with “mastic.” In 1476 the two noblemen em-
barked on a voyage to England, and again Colum-
bus accompanied them in a flotilla — for it was a
voyage of importance — which consisted of five
armed merchantmen. When they were off Cape
St. Vincent, who should appear but the corsair and
French vice-admiral, William of Caseneuve, alias
“Columbus”! Between the Genoese vessels and

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

17

those of Louis XI there straightway ensued a des-
perate struggle. In the end, ships on both sides
took fire, and the crews leaped overboard. Colum-
bus of Genoa, the future discoverer, leaped with
others and, being fortunate enough to be picked
up, was landed on the Portuguese coast near Lis-
bon, wounded, drenched, and exhausted. Such,
in August, 1476, was the advent of Columbus in
Portugal, an advent certainly fortuitous if not
“miraculous,” as he terms it.

From Lisbon, Columbus continued in Decem-
ber his interrupted voyage to England, stopping
probably at Bristol; and it would seem that he
even adventured into the seas toward Iceland. “I
sailed,” he says, as quoted by his son Ferdinand,
“in the month of February, 1477, a hundred
leagues beyond the island of Thule [Iceland].” At
some period prior to 1503 the discoverer had read
the Latin poet Seneca and found the lines:

In later ages a time shall come,

When the Ocean shall relax its chains;

When Tiphys shall disclose new lands,

And Thule shall no longer be earth’s bound.

Now Columbus took Tiphys, the pilot, as his own
prototype; and, to make the identification more

18 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

complete, he may have deemed it well that the
discoverer of America should, as a preliminary,
have fared beyond Thule.

In the career of Columbus, Portugal was the
first turning-point. Hither he returned in 1477 or
1478; and here, in 1479 or 1480, after a trip back to
Genoa, he married. This event was the reward of
his piety. In Lisbon there was a convent of the
religious Order of St. Jacques, called the Convent
of Saints. Its protegees were bound to vows of
chastity — conjugal chastity, not celibacy — and
among them was Felipa, a daughter of two of
the noblest of Portuguese houses, and Felipa was
beautiful. Coming daily to the chapel of this con-
vent to make his devotions, Columbus saw Felipa,
fell in love with her, and they were wed. To the
couple, in 1480 or 1481, a child was born — Colum-
bus’s first son, Diego. At this period, too, Colum-
bus became associated in Lisbon with his younger
brother, Bartholomew, a prepossessing youth of
about nineteen, astute, of some education, and
skilled in the art of limning marine charts.

The father of Felipa Columbus was Bartholo-
mew Perestrello, Governor of Porto Santo of the
Madeira Group, and it is a firm tradition that, at

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

19

his death in 1457, he left to his wife Isabel, Felipa’s
mother, charts and papers which served first to
direct Columbus’s mind toward great projects in
the West. Another tradition — long credited,
then long discredited, and now revived — was that
Columbus, upon his marriage, settled in the island
of Madeira, which is near to that of Porto Santo,
and that, while he was here, a Spanish ship, which
had been driven westward to the island afterwards
found by Columbus and named Espanola, came
forlornly back, getting as far only as Madeira.
Here, so the tradition ran, the pilot of the ship,
together with such of the crew as survived, de-
barked; but the crew, famished and sick, all
died, leaving only the pilot. Then he, too, died
in the house of Columbus; but not before he had
imparted to his host the amazing story of his
voyage and had given to him his log and a chart
of his route.

Be the truth of these two traditions what it may,
it is a well-settled fact that in Portugal Columbus
met pilots and captains and was enabled to accom-
pany Portuguese expeditions down the coast of
Africa. “I was,” he says, “at the Fortress of St.
George of the Mine, belonging to the King of Por-
tugal, which lies below the equinoctial line.” The

20 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

object of such voyages was largely the discovery
of new islands. The Canaries and the Madeiras,
the outermost of the Azores and the Cape Verde
Group, all were treasure-trove of the fifteenth cen-
tury, and there might well be others. In these
times, indeed, islands rose smiling to greet the dis-
coverer on his approach. Nay more: where actual
islands were not forthcoming, imaginary ones de-
veloped in their stead. But were these isles as
mythical and imaginary as they were represented?
The question is pertinent, for upon the answer
depends in good measure what we shall think of
the nature of the incentive which underlay the
voyage of 1492, the voyage resulting in the dis-
covery of America.

The very appearance of islands like Antiilia,
Salvagio, Reyella, and Insula in Mar on charts
such, for example, as the “Beccaria” of 1435 at-
tests the prevalence of a tradition — and that a
mature one — that such a group existed. Such a
tradition could probably have had but one origin :
chance voyages across the Atlantic from Europe to
North America, and especially to the West India
Islands of North America. Indeed, in 1474 or
1475, Fernao Telles sought the mythical Antiilia
— sometimes called the Isle of the Seven Cities —

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

21

under express warrant from the King of Portugal,
Alfonso V. And in his journal of 1492 Columbus
records that “many honorable Spanish gentlemen
[of the Canary Group] declared that every year
they saw land to the west of the Canaries.” Again
he records that in 1484, when he was in Portugal,
“a man [Domimguez do Arco] came to the King
[John II] from the island of Madeira to beg for a
caravel to go to this island that was seen”; and
that “the same thing [the existence of an island
in the West] was affirmed in the Azores.” How,
therefore, there might arise a story, true or false,
of a shipwrecked pilot who gave to Columbus the
clue to the finding of the island of Espanola, may
readily be perceived. But, concerning stories of
and by pilots, more anon.

Columbus had now acquired some knowledge of
the theory and art of navigation, and, incidentally,
some knowledge of Latin; and having made up his
mind, as had Telles before him, that in the Atlan-
tic to the west there yet remained “islands and
lands” to be discovered, he obtained an audience
with the King of Portugal and laid before him
a definite proposal. He asked for three caravels
equipped and supplied for a year; and, in the
event of lands being found, for the viceroyalty and

22

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

perpetual government therein, a tenth of the in-
come therefrom, the rank of nobleman, and the
title of grand admiral.

According to Portuguese chroniclers writing in
the sixteenth century, the particular “land” Co-
lumbus had in view was Cipangu or Japan. But,
whatever Columbus may have disclosed or reserved
with respect to Japan, or with respect to Antiilia,
at this first interview with the Portuguese King,
so affronted was the monarch by what he felt to
be the vanity and presumption of the petitioner
that he promptly referred his plea to a council of
three experts, by whom, after some deliberation, it
was dismissed. Thereupon Columbus, late in 1485
or early in 1486, left Portugal for Spain.

At this point in the fortunes of Christopher Co-
lumbus, there arises for consideration a peculiar
circumstance. Columbus had a double, the well-
known cosmographer of Nuremberg, Martin Be-
haim. Like Columbus, this man was born near
the middle of the fifteenth century; like him, he
lacked university training; like him, his early ac-
tivities were commercial; like him, he settled in
Portugal (1480-84) ; like him, he voyaged to Africa;
like him, he was identified with an Atlantic island.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

Fayal in his case, and married the daughter of the
Governor; like him, he was busied with nautical
studies in Lisbon; like him, he was not highly re-
gardful of veracity; and finally, like him, he died
in neglect early in the sixteenth century. Behaim,
however, unlike Columbus, was of patrician an-
cestry, was instructed in the use of nautical in-
struments, became a Knight of Portugal, and at
Lisbon had the entree to aristocratic and scientific
circles.

The extent of his geographical knowledge may
be inferred from a globe which he completed at
Nuremberg in 1492, before the return of Columbus
from his first voyage. His authorities included
Aristotle and Strabo, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and
Sir John Mandeville; but his chief authority was
Pierre d’Ailly, whose Imago Mundi [World Sur-
vey], written in 1410, formed a compendium of
the geographical and cosmographical notions of
authors such as Marinus of Tyre and Alfraganus
the Arabian. To put the matter briefly, the ideas
of Pierre d’Ailly and Marco Polo are strikingly
expressed in this globe, which shows Cathay and
India, both marked rich, opposite to Portugal and
Africa, and about 120° west of the Cape Verde Is-
lands and the Azores instead of the actual distance

24

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of over 200°. Cathay is thus brought forward
nearly to the position of California; Cipango
[Cipangu] or Japan, marked as especially rich,
falls athwart the position of Mexico; while Antiilia
lies northeast of the position of Hayti or Espanola;
and St. Brandan occupies, in part, the position of
northern South America.

But why did Behaim take pains to construct a
globe? The answer is clear. He had recently (1486)
adventured in a project to confirm his geographical
ideas ; he had attempted a secret voyage westward
to Asia in partnership with two fellow islanders —
Fernam Dulmo of Terceira, a navigator, and Joao
Affonso Estreito of Madeira, his patron. The en-
terprise had failed; and yet he did not wish his ideas
to be lost or appropriated by another.

Concerning Columbus, however, the important
question is: Was he indebted to Behaim for his
own ideas of cosmography — for the idea, es-
pecially, of a small earth? It would hardly seem
so. The two men may have met in Portugal, but,
even if they had, each at the time was guarding a
secret, or the approaches to one: Columbus, that
of islands — perchance of a specific island — to
be discovered; and Behaim, that of a scheme for
exploiting Asia. That not very much confidential

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

25

communication between them was likely under the
circumstances may be conjectured.1

Columbus, according to his own statement,
entered Spain after fourteen years spent in vain
labors in Portugal. As a matter of fact, his stay
there did not at the utmost exceed ten years, prob-
ably only five or six. He came accompanied by his
son Diego, for Felipa, beautiful daughter of the
Convent of Saints, had probably died soon after
Diego’s birth. Furthermore, he quitted Portugal,
for what reason may never be known, “secretly at
night.”

In Spain Columbus’s first objective was Palos.
Here, at the monastery of La Rabida, whose guard-
ian, Antonio de Marchena, the future discoverer
is said to have known in Portugal, he found lodg-
ings for himself and a temporary home for his son.

1 Until within recent years, it was the unquestioned belief that the
views regarding the proximity of eastern Asia to western Europe,
which Columbus is known to have come to entertain, were due to
a letter sent him, about 1480, by Paolo Toscanelli, a distinguished
Florentine astronomer. The letter was accompanied, so it was
claimed, by a chart of the confronting European and Asiatic sea-
boards, which Toscanelli himself had drafted, showing Antiilia and
Japan as, so to speak, halting points or stepping-stones across the
intervening Atlantic Ocean. But the belief in a Toscanelli letter no
longer is unquestioned. Consult the writings of Vignaud and of
Bourne, mentioned on page 219.

26

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

The supposition is that at Palos, which as a sea-
port was the resort of mariners and where there
were many Portuguese, Columbus counted upon
obtaining special information with regard to the
landfall of some particular early voyage or voyages
into the West.

But if Palos was Columbus’s first objective in
Spain, his second was the Court of the Spanish
sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. To these per-
sonages Columbus worked his way, so to speak, by
the influence of the Duke of Medina Coeli, who had
wealth; and who at first contemplated assuming
in the schemes of Columbus a role not unlike that
of Estreito in the project of Behaim. But, coming
to realize that the affair was one to be accom-
plished successfully only under royal patronage,
the Duke applied to the sovereigns, who com-
manded that Columbus himself be sent to Court.

Cordova now for some time had been the seat of
government, and here Columbus arrived on Janu-
ary 20, 1486. The sovereigns were then absent,
but returned at the end of April or first of May, and
the coveted audience took place. What occurred
is not known. Presumably F erdinand and Isabella,
after a courteous hearing, smilingly put by the
question of exploration, for they referred it to the

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

27

Queen’s confessor, Hernando de Talavera, an
ecclesiastic by no means ungenerous or bigoted,
with instructions to summon a council for its
consideration. As for the council, not a soul who
was a member ever revealed aught of its composi-
tion or doings, save Dr. Rodrigo de Maldonado,
who says that men of science and mariners were in
attendance, no less than literary men and theo-
logues, and that Columbus himself was subjected
to interrogation.

Talavera’s council conferred at intervals for five
years, often at Salamanca, and at length, late in
1490, reported adversely for Columbus, and the
sovereigns accepted the report. In the life of the
great Italian adventurer, our future discoverer and
admiral, these five years are among the most in-
teresting and significant. They mark, it is true, a
moral and material decline, but, like the first years
in Portugal, they mark an intellectual advance.

While awaiting action by the council, Columbus
was retained at Court and encouraged by occa-
sional donations of money — donations appearing
on record as made to “a stranger occupied with
certain affairs relative to the service of their High-
nesses.” The sums, in all, came to $510 (170,000
maravedis); but, small as they were, they had

28 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

•

altogether ceased by 1488. In that year it was, or
at the end of 1487, the preceding year, that Colum-
bus for a second time fell victim to feminine at-
tractions. The maiden, like his first bride Felipa,
was young — eighteen or twenty years old — pos-
sessed a beautiful name, Beatrix Enriquez, and
doubtless a beautiful person, but, unlike Felipa,
she was humble of birth and very poor. So lowly,
indeed, was she that Columbus did not stoop to
take her in marriage, but formed with her a liaison ,
the result of which was the birth, about August
15, 1488, of his second son and future biographer,
Ferdinand.

Between the date just given and the spring of
1489, Columbus would seem to have gone back to
Portugal under a safe-conduct from John II, but
why he went, if he did go, is unknown, and by
May 12, 1489, he was again in Spain and in at-
tendance upon Ferdinand and Isabella at the siege
of Baza. Thenceforth, however, until the final
rejection of his project by the sovereigns in 1490,
he drops from view, excepting as we are accorded
glimpses of him gaining bread for himself and
Beatrix in Cordova by limning marine charts,
wherein he evidently had been instructed by his
brother Bartholomew, and by selling printed

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

29

books. This vending of printed books may have
meant much in that intellectual advance which has
been spoken of as characterizing for the discoverer-
to-be the days, somber or hectic, through which he
was now passing.

Some years before his brother had fallen on hard
times, Bartholomew Columbus had betaken him-
self from Portugal (where he had witnessed the
return of the great Portuguese captain, Bartholo-
meu Dias, from his discovery of the Cape of Good
Hope) to enlist the aid of King Henry VH of Eng-
land in his brother Christopher’s project. Then,
abandoning England, he had recourse in turn to
France, and now was making himself agreeable at
the Court of Charles VIII.

Thither Columbus determined to follow him, but
his departure was prevented by a visit which he
paid to Palos and to the monastery of La Rabida,
to make further arrangements for the care of his
son Diego. This visit, unlike the first, does not
seem to have been inspired by a specific wish for
light upon voyages, with strange landfalls, under
strange pilots. Columbus was poverty-stricken
and, for once, discouraged. With what cheer he
might, he met his friend, the former guardian.

30 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Antonio de Marchena, and also (perhaps for the
first time) the officiating guardian, Juan Perez,
once confessor to Queen Isabella.

By these three, under the stimulating zeal of the
monks, a plan was contrived. Columbus should
thoroughly canvass the maritime section having
Palos for a center, for all possible information re-
garding pioneer voyages into the Sea of Darkness.
The first seaman to be sought out and catechized
was Pedro de Velasco, a pilot of Palos itself. Next,
after Velasco, an unnamed pilot of the port of
Santa Maria, near Cadiz, was visited. He had
sailed west from Ireland, and had, he thought,
sighted the coasts of Tartary — not improbably
Labrador. Finally a second pilot domiciled in
Palos, Pedro Vasquez de la Frontera, was waited
upon, and what was gathered from him was sug-
gestive indeed. Between 1460 and 1475 he had
made a voyage into the West, with “a Prince of
Portugal,” to discover “new lands.” Their pur-
pose was to sail “straight West,” but, encounter-
ing that vast field of marine herbage known as
the Sargasso Sea, he had turned back.

At this time, in Palos, the most important man
of maritime affairs was the head of the family
of Pinzon — Martin Alonso, “best-known and

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

31

bravest of captains and pilots” — and to him Co-
lumbus would first have addressed himself, had not
this mariner been absent with a cargo of sardines
at Rome. As it was, Columbus awaited his return
eagerly.

Pinzon, as it chanced, was at this juncture cher-
ishing a project of his own for exploring to the
West, and while in Rome had sought light at the
library of Pope Innocent VIII upon “lands in the
Ocean Sea.” There he had seen “a map and a
book,” both of which (in the form of copies, no
doubt) he had brought with him. These docu-
ments, according to Pinzon’s son, Pinzon the
father not only submitted to Columbus but gave
into his hands. Furthermore Pinzon and Colum-
bus now went together to the house of Pedro Vas-
quez de la Frontera and got him to repeat the tale
of how, with a Prince of Portugal, he had sailed
west as far as the Sargasso Sea, from before which
he had recoiled. It was necessary “to brave this
obstacle,” said V&squez, because by not doing so
the Prince had failed to find land. If, on meeting
the Sargasso Sea, one would but keep “straight
on,” it would be “impossible that land should not
be found.”

How, on his voyage in 1492, Columbus made use

32

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of “a chart” whereon he himself had depicted
“certain islands”; how this chart was passed back
and forth between him and Martin Alonso Pinzon;
and how, apropos of the impending landfall, one
of the pilots spoke to Columbus of indications from
“your book,” are incidents well known. Nor is it
less well known that on this voyage, after encoun-
tering the Sargasso Sea, Columbus despite protest
“braved the obstacle” and kept “straight on,”
literally “on and on,” following as nearly as he
could the twenty-eighth parallel, till land reward-
ed his perseverance.

Not long after the return of Martin Alonso Pin-
zon from Rome, Guardian Juan Perez, and perhaps
Pinzon also, wrote to Queen Isabella, asking a
further hearing for Columbus and his project. The
request was granted, and Perez was summoned to
Court at Santa Fe, before Granada. He set out
in a manner truly Columbian, alone, on a mule,
secretly at low midnight. He was soon empowered
to invite Columbus to join him. In December the
latter came. Ferdinand and Isabella were in re-
ceptive mood. Granada was about to fall and
Spain to be delivered from the Moor forever. A
council was ordered — one, like Talavera’s, com-
posed of philosophers, astrologers, cosmographers.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

33

seamen, and pilots. With Talavera’s council, how-
ever, the primary consideration had been the theo-
retical feasibility of Columbus’s project. With
the new council, it was the practical question of
ways and means that gave pause.

Columbus, repeating with emphasis the terms
submitted to King John II of Portugal, demanded
of Ferdinand and Isabella a patent of nobility,
the admiralty of the ocean, the viceroyalty and
government of all lands discovered, and “a com-
mission of ten per cent upon everything within
the limits of his admiralty which might be bought,
exchanged, found, or gained.” That, in addition,
he should demand three caravels, to cost possibly
2,000,000 maravedis ($6000), was by comparison
trifling.

In after years the discoverer of America was
wont to complain that in his struggle for recogni-
tion in Spain “everybody had derided him, save
two monks,” Marchena and Perez. Derided he
no doubt was, but the cause perhaps was not so
much his belief in problematical islands and lands
as his demand for rewards — rewards which, if
granted, would raise him to a dizzy height, to a
point of rank, power, and riches next to that of the
throne itself.

34

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

As in 1486, so in 1492, in the month of January
to which we are now come, Columbus was dis-
missed a second time from the Spanish Court
and departed sorrowing. The royal flags streamed
from the towers of the Alhambra, for Granada had
fallen, but in this event our Genoese took little
interest. His course led him toward Cordova, for
here was Beatrix Enriquez with Ferdinand, now
in his fourth year; and here must now be brought
Diego, ten or twelve years old, from La Rabida.
Again it must have been France, his last hope
among the nations, with which the thoughts of
Columbus were busy. Be that as it may, when but
two leagues from Granada who should overtake
him but a royal constable, sent posthaste by the
Queen with orders for his return! His demands,
one and all, would be complied with.

What specifically it was that induced the Spanish
sovereigns to change their minds may be only in-
ferred. Whether it was proof of actual islands to
the west, proof secretly confided to Columbus at
Palos, no one knows. Whatever it was, the lost
cause was powerfully pleaded before Isabella by
Luis de Santangel, treasurer of Aragon; and before
Ferdinand by Juan Cabrero, his chamberlain, and
by Juan Diego of Deza, preceptor to Prince John.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

35

The risk was small, the possibilities for God and
the realm were incalculable — such, we are told,
was the reasoning. Especially was it the reasoning
of Santangel; and so wrought upon by it was Isa-
bella, that, seized with enthusiasm, she is said to
have tendered her jewels, priceless gems that they
were, in security for money for the enterprise. 1

What manner of navigator was this Genoese,
this Christopher Columbus, by whom this vast
enterprise had been conceived, and by whom it

1 But just here a question. Columbus knew that the world was
round, and, like Behaim his double, had read Ser Marco Polo’s Book
and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Unlike Behaim, however,
he in all probability had not read the Imago Mundi of Pierre d’Ailly,
with its doctrine of a small earth, and hence of a short route to Asia.
Is it likely, then, that in 1492 his objective was Asia, as was Behaim’s
in 1486? Is it not more likely that it was merely “islands and lands”
in the far Atlantic?

And again. In 1492, on the 17th of April, the Spanish sovereigns
issued to Columbus a Capitulation empowering him, on his own terms,
to seek “islands and lands” but in no way mentioning Asia; and this
Capitulation was confirmed by Letters Patent on the 30th of April.
Now may not the failure here to mention Asia, (Cathay or India) be
due to a fact — the fact, namely, that Columbus’s hopes and expecta-
tions stopped short of Asia?

One might perhaps think that the aims of Columbus were exclusive
of Asia, were it not for two considerations : the first, that he had cause,
both from Marco Polo’s Book and from Pinz6n personally, to be
aware that Asia was a background to Japan, and, like it, probably
attainable from the West; the second, that in 1492 he carried with
him, besides a general passport, a special “Letter” from his sover-
eigns to “The Most Serene Prince, our very dear friend,” etc. — a
document almost certainly implying the Great Kaan of Cathay.

36 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

was to be carried out? He was, indeed, no stran-
ger to the sea, for he had been to Chios in the
east, to Africa in the south, and to England in the
north. To use his own words: “I have traversed
the sea for twenty-three years [?] without leaving
it for any time worth counting, and I saw all the
Levant and the West [Azores, etc.], and the North
which is the way to England; and I have been to
Guinea.”

In nautical skill, the scientific feature of sea-
faring, Columbus according to the most compe-
tent opinion was, however, little advanced. He
claimed that on his Guinea trips he had verified
Alfraganus’s calculation of the length of a degree
on the equator as 56% Italian miles. But, aside
from the fact that at the period of these trips
(1482-84) he could hardly have known of Alfra-
ganus or his calculation, for he then presumably
knew nothing of the Imago Mundi of Pierre d’Ailly
— a book possibly not then even published —
there remains the further fact that verification
was a process quite too complex for any means
at his disposal. His claim, therefore, tends only
to prove him guilty of what a stanch admirer
does not hesitate to characterize as “insufferable
braggadocio.”

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

37

But, daunted as little by the obstacle of igno-
rance as by other obstacles, the would-be discover-
er held unflinchingly to his role, and, when all was
over and the triumph won, could bring himself to
say: “I had from [our Lord] a spirit of intelli-

gence. In regard to navigation He made me very
intelligent; of Astrology He gave me what was
sufficient; and also of Geometry and Arithmetic.
He gave me an ingenious mind and hands apt in
designing this sphere, and upon it the cities, moun-
tains and the rivers, the islands and harbors, all in
their proper place. In this time I saw and studied
diligently all the books of Cosmography, History
& of Philosophy, & of other sciences.” Yet for all
this confidence, if the voyage of 1492 had de-
pended on the technical knowledge of Columbus,
its history would be brief. Indeed, had it not been
for Martin Alonso Pinzon, it would never have
been made in that year.

Pinzon, we may recall, was in 1492 the chief citi-
zen of Palos. After the Spanish sovereigns had
decided to sanction and subvention the Columbian
undertaking, they gave decree that of the three
caravels required two should be furnished by the
town of Palos in discharge of a feudal liability to
the Crown, and Columbus on the 12th of May set

38 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

out from Granada to make sure of the vessels.
The pending expedition was unpopular in itself
and still more unpopular in that its admiral was a
foreigner. But at length Columbus obtained the
three caravels — the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa
Maria ( capitana ). So far well, or fairly well, and
then a balk. The seamen of Palos unanimously and
persistently refused to embark. To them the pro-
ject was “perilous, chimerical, and vain, ” a subject
of derision. Columbus had papers for the im-
pressment of criminals, but to escape this neces-
sity he went to Pinzon, who supplied the sailors
on being assured of some share in the enterprise.

In respect to size, rig, and equipment, the three
Columbian caravels were nearly the same. The
Santa Maria, which was slightly the largest, meas-
ured about eighty feet in length, twenty-five feet
in breadth, and fifteen feet in depth, and had a
capacity of over two hundred tons. All were fullj;
decked, had three masts, and, except upon the
mizzen, were square rigged. The Santa Maria and
Pinta had each a high poop-deck and forecastle;
but the Nina, reputed the smallest of the three, had
neither. All were good sailers, making as a flotilla
an average speed of fifteen Italian miles an hour,
and each had something of an armament.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

39

The personnel of the expedition comprised some
ninety seamen and thirty royal officials, servants,
domestics, and cabin boys; but no friar or ecclesias-
tic was listed. In supreme command of the ex-
pedition was Columbus himself, on the Santa
Marla; and in command of the Santa Marla was
her owner, the cosmographer Juan de la Cosa.
This vessel carried also two pilots, a grand con-
stable, a physician, an archivist, and an interpreter
versed in several tongues. The Pinta was com-
manded by Martin Alonso Pinzon; and one of its
two pilots was Martin’s brother Francisco; while
as commander of the Nina sailed Vicente Yanes
Pinzon, youngest brother of Martin Alonso, and
one of the two future discoverers of subequatorial
South America. The pilot was the owner, Pero
Alonso Nifio.

Columbus set sail from Palos on August 3, 1492,
at sunrise. First, however, he had arranged for
sending his young son Diego to Cordova, to be
cared for by Beatrix Enriquez, with whom was his
younger son Ferdinand. First also — supremely
first! — he had made confession and solemnly re-
ceived the Sacrament. As his ships cleared the
bar of Saltes and gathered headway, naught but
inspiring could have been the spectacle: the high

40 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

prows, the huge square sails each emblazoned with
its cross, the magnificent sweep of the rakish
lateens athwart the towering sterns, the flags and
streamers; the officers crowding the poop-decks,
the sailors thronging the forecastles and crow’s-
pests — all saluting, many praying, some no doubt
weeping, all crying “Adios!” How tremendous it
all was! How much it meant!

As a mere feat of seamanship, however, this first
recorded voyage across the Atlantic was not con-
siderable. The flotilla left the Canary Island of
Gomera on September 6, 1492, and shaped a course
westward. The winds blew steadily astern; no
storms arose; the resources of navigation were in
no wise taxed. Indeed, on the 16th of September
and often afterwards, Columbus notes that “they
met with very temperate breezes so that there was
great pleasure in enjoying the mornings, nothing
being wanted but the song of nightingales. . . .
The weather,” he says, “was like April in Anda-
lusia.”

Apprehension nevertheless did not sleep; it
lurked. Already solemn Teneriffe had raised
above them in greeting — mayhap in warning! —
its staff of fire. The needle, victim perchance of
subtle necromancy, had begun straying from the

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

4,1

pole. Grass, first in green tufts, then in fine
masses, then in tangles and skeins with crabs en-
meshed, that grass before which a Prince of Portu-
gal had once turned back, was all about them.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

And those winds, so balmy but so fatefully setting
into the unknown West! Was it not all a snare
of unseen Powers? There were murmurs — plots,
it is said — to seize the Admiral unawares and
hurl him overboard. Columbus, on his part,
laughed at the fears of the sailors and made them
big offers of wealth. Had he not the whole of
Cathay before him?

That in his mind Columbus had Asia, the coun-
try of the Great Kaan, as in some sort a destina-
tion, cannot well be gainsaid if we are prepared to
yield any substantial credence to his J ournal as we
have it. According to that document, he was
expecting, as early as the 16th of September, to
come upon “islands” but “made the main land
to be more distant,” and thought it better to go
at once to the continent and afterwards to the
islands. But of the events of this voyage, his
though it was, Columbus was not sole arbiter.

42 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Martin Alonso Pinzon, by circumstances and
also perhaps by agreement, was an associate; and
in his mind, evidently, the destination was Cipangu
or Japan. As will be recalled, he had brought from
Rome a “chart” and a “book,” both of which he
had handed to Columbus. Now in the “book”
was this sentence: “In navigating by the medi-
terranean Sea to the end of Spain, and thence in the
direction where the Sun sinks between the North
and the South, you will find a land of Sypanso
[Cipangu] which is so fertile and so rich that by aid
of its resources you will [be able to] subjugate both
Africa and Europe.” Furthermore, inspired by
the “book,” and also by Marco Polo, Pinzon in a
recruiting appeal to the seamen of Palos had said:
“Friends, come with us! Come with us on this
voyage! Here you are in poverty. Come with us,
for according to accounts you will find the houses
with roofs of gold, and you will return rich and
prosperous ! ”

When, therefore, on the 25th of September,
Martin Alonso called Columbus’s attention to the
fact that, according to a “chart” which both were
using, the flotilla ought to be sighting “certain
islands,” we are not surprised, for it was islands,
or at least the island of Japan, and not a mainland,

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

43

in which the interest of Pinzon centered. And when,
on the 7th of October, Columbus in deference to
the wish of Pinzon actually changed direction from
west to west-southwest; and when, on the 12th,
land, Guanahani or Watling Island, rewarded the
change, it was natural that both Columbus and Pin-
zon should be convinced that they were in an archi-
pelago of Asiatic India, with Japan not far away.

The expedition now had traversed 1123 leagues,
or 4492 Italian miles, from the Canaries; and yet,
as Ferdinand Columbus informs us, 700 or 750
leagues (3000 miles) was the distance at which the
Admiral had told his men that he expected to find
land. If this “land” was the Antillia-Salvagio-
Reyella Group (West Indies or Antilles), as seems
probable, it is represented on Behaim’s globe
(through a composite Antiilia) as from 2200 to
2500 miles west from the Canaries; and it was at
about this distance, on and near the 25th of Sep-
tember, that both Columbus and Pinzon began
anxiously scanning the horizon. The fact that
3000 miles was given out by Columbus as the
distance to be covered before land might be looked
for, may be explained by his wish to mislead his
crews into the belief that they were committed to

44 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

a longer unbroken voyage than they really were.
He, in fact, states repeatedly, in his Journal , that
he kept a dual reckoning, one of actual distances
for himself and one of minimized distances for his
men. How he could have contrived to do this,
with half a dozen pilots and a score or more of
others at his elbow more competent at rating a
ship’s progress than himself, “goodness,” as Lord
Dunraven puts it, “only knows.”

A landfall, in the case of any fifteenth century
voyage of discovery, was momentous, but espe-
cially was it so in the case of a Spanish voyage.
Commanders fell on their knees and gave thanks;
crews chanted the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and
crowded into the rigging and tops; flags were run
up and guns were fired. So was it at Guanahani
on October 12, 1492. Clad in armor, over which,
true to his taste in color and to his instinct for
effect, he had thrown the crimson robe of an Ad-
miral of Castile, Columbus, with the furled royal
standard grasped in his left hand, bent low to the
earth, which he saluted. His actions were imitated
by the captains of the Pinta and Nina, Martin
Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yanes, who
bore standards emblazoned each with a green cross.
Then, rising, Columbus summoned to him the royal

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

45

notary and the royal inspector as witnesses, un-
furled the royal standard, drew his sword, and
proclaimed the island the possession henceforth of
the Crown of Spain, naming it San Salvador.

So the day ended; but early the next morning,
as we are told, the natives gathered on the shore in
large numbers, and, destitute of beards themselves,
looked with wonder on the bearded Spaniards, on
Columbus in particular. To his beard and those
of his men they “reached out their fingers, and
viewed attentively the whiteness of the Spanish
hands and faces.”

On the 28th of October the expedition discovered
Cuba, and on the 5th of December, Hayti or
Espanola. Everywhere Columbus was charmed
with the scenery. “The herbage is like that of
April in Andalusia.” Andalusia serves always as
the standard of comparison. So pleasant are the
songs of birds that “it seems as though a man could
never wish to leave the place.” Parrots rise in
“flocks so dense as to conceal the sun.” In Cuba
are “palm trees differing from those in Spain and
Guinea.” As for the inhabitants of the new re-
gions, they are “docile,” “very gentle and kind,”
going “ naked without arms and without law.” But
the things which make a particular appeal to the

46 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

discoverer are five: gold, religion, spices, Cipangu,
and Cathay.

Gold he began inquiring about from the natives
on the day following the landing. “I was attentive
and took trouble to ascertain,” he says, “if there
was gold.” But gold, in the Journal, is a theme
hardly more emphasized than religion. On the
very day of the landing Columbus writes: “I
believe that they [the natives] would easily be
made Christians as it appeared to me they had
no sect.”

He was equally attentive to any mention of
spices. “According as I obtain tidings of gold or
spices, I shall settle what must be done.” More-
over it is in connection with spices that the Jour-
nal introduces Cipangu and Cathay. Having, on
the 7th of October, given over the search for the
“mainland,” Columbus on the 21st speaks of
proceeding to Cipangu, which he identifies with
Cuba because of the latter’s “size and riches.”
It is better, he says, to “inspect much land until
some very profitable country is reached, my belief
being that it will be rich in spices.” And on the
24th he resumes: “On the spheres that I saw

[before leaving Spain], and on the paintings of
world-maps, Cipangu is in this region.” Then,

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

47

on the 26th of October, the subject is dropped
with the remark: “I departed . . . for Cuba, for,
by the signs the Indians made of its greatness and
of its gold and pearls, I thought that it must be the
one — that is to say, Cipangu.”

But the mainland recurs in his thoughts; and
on the 30th he decides, from a statement by the
Indians, that Cuba itself is the mainland of Asia,
with Cathay and the Great Kaan somewhere
therein; and that he must send to the latter the
credentials he bears from Ferdinand and Isabella.
Accordingly, on the 2d of November, he dis-
patches from a point on the Cuban coast his offi-
cial interpreter, Luis de Torres, a converted Jew,
with a party carrying “specimens of spices,” to
“ask for the King of that land.” To him they are
to deliver the credentials, and from him they are
to inquire “concerning certain provinces, ports,
and rivers, of which the Admiral has notice.”
Later, Columbus identified Cipangu with Hayti;
but Cuba he consistently continued to regard as
the mainland, peering expectantly into its bays
and up its streams for “populous cities” such as
the Kinsay of Marco Polo and of the world
maps, maps like Fra Mauro’s of 1457-59, which he
“saw” before leaving Spain. Having completed

48

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

his voyage by “finding what he sought,” though
manifestly not “populous cities,” Columbus set
sail from the eastern end of the island of Hayti for
home on January 16, 1493.

Two occurrences hastened his return. On No-
vember 21, 1492, Martin Alonso Pinzon, impatient
for the discovery of Cipangu and the realization
of those dreams of gold on the strength of which he
had secured enlistments at Palos, had gone off in
the Pinta for some prospecting of his own. Then,
on Christmas night, the Santa Maria had been
wrecked, leaving the Admiral with only the Nina
wherein to continue his explorations. Thus handi-
capped, he had been forced to build on Espanola
(Hayti) a fortress, La Navidad, where he left
thirty-seven of his men, and crowded into the
Nina the remainder.

Pinzon had rejoined the expedition on January
6, 1493, but the Admiral was much vexed and not
disposed to parley or linger. Nor is his vexation
hard to understand. Columbus was the titular
and technical head of the expedition, but in reality
he was much the servant of his lieutenant, for
Pinzon was a Spaniard, the friend and fellow-
townsman of the crews, who would not have en-
dured to see him disciplined.

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

49

In strong contrast to the voyage out, the voyage
back was tempestuous. Storms began on the
12th of February and so grew in violence that on
the 14th Columbus placed in a barrel a parchment
inscribed with an account of his discoveries and
committed it to the sea. But he succeeded in
making port in the Portuguese island of Santa
Maria, one of the Azores, whence he sailed for
Castile. More storms delayed him, but on the
4th of March the Nina entered the Tagus and
anchored off Rastelo. Of the fate of the Pinta ,
meanwhile, nothing had been known since the
14th of February, when she had disappeared run-
ning before the wind.

Once at anchor, and once having satisfied the
Portuguese authorities that he was a duly accred-
ited officer of the Spanish Marine, Columbus was
hospitably received, granted supplies, and invited
by King John II, the same with whom he had
held memorable converse in 1483 or 1484, to
visit him at Valparaiso near Lisbon. Columbus
went with some trepidation and, according to
Portuguese accounts, told the King that he “had
come from the discovery of the islands of Cipangu
and Antiilia, ” but made no mention of Cathay
and the Great Kaan, or of India. “O man of

50

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

miserable understanding,” the King is said, by
Spaniards, to have exclaimed at the interview,
smiting his breast, “why didst thou let an under-
taking of such great importance go out of thine
hands!”

By the 15th of March the Admiral was at Palos,
where on the evening of the same day Martin Alonso
Pinzon likewise arrived, having brought the Pinta
safe into port at B ay ona in Galicia. But it was a full
month before Columbus was received by Ferdinand
and Isabella in Barcelona, and in the meantime Pin-
zon, already ill when he disembarked, had breathed
his last. What light upon the great voyage to the
Antilles might have been shed had Pinzon — force-
ful personality that he was — survived !

In Sevilla where, amid much ovation, Columbus
awaited the pleasure of the Spanish sovereigns,
there came to him a letter, dated the 30th of
March, addressed to “The Admiral of the Ocean
Sea and Viceroy and Governor of the islands dis-
covered in the Indies, ” and confirming what had
previously been conditionally granted to him in the
Capitulation and Letters Patent of April, 1492.

If the welcome to the Admiral at Sevilla had
been noteworthy, that which he was accorded at
Barcelona was more noteworthy still. Throngs

PREPARED FOR THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA UNDER THE
DIRECTION GF W L. G.UOERG, AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

PREPARED FOR THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA UNDER THE
DIRECTION OFW.L.G.JOERG, AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

51

attended him, and his bodyguard was the best
chivalry of Spain. In advance marched a group
of some half-dozen New World Indians and a squad
of sailors from the Nina. The Indians wore gold
armaments and carried spears and arrows, while
the sailors bore aloft forty parrots of gorgeous
plumage, besides other birds, together with rare
plants and animals, among which not the least
was an iguana five feet long, its back bristling
with spines.

Ferdinand and Isabella, happy at the success of
their adventurous protege, which no doubt they had
scarcely expected, were augustly gracious. Seated
under a golden canopy in the Alcazar of the Moor-
ish Kings, they rose to greet Columbus on his
entry, gently deprecated his lowliness in stooping
to kiss their hands, and made him sit at their feet.

So placed, the discoverer of America, a master of
speech, told his tale, illustrating it with the Indians,
the sailors, the specimens, and the gold. The
monarchs and court then said a prayer, the choir
of the royal chapel chanted Te Deum, and the
ceremony closed.

The news of the return of Columbus soon spread
and evoked ingenious appraisals among the learned.

“In the month of August last,” as Hannibal

MAR 5 1958

GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST
OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

SR767

0271163

52 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Januarius, an Italian gentleman from Barcelona,
wrote to his brother in 1493: “This great King
[Ferdinand], at the prayer of one named Collomba,
caused four [sic] little vessels to be equipped to
navigate . . . upon the ocean in a straight line
toward the west until finally the east was reached.
The earth being round he should certainly arrive
in the eastern regions.” Also from Barcelona, on
the 14th of May, Peter Martyr, the Horace Wal-
pole of his day, wrote to his friend Count Tindilla:
“A few days after [an attempted assassination of
King Ferdinand], there returned from the West-
ern Antipodes a certain Christopher Columbus, a
Ligurian, who with barely three ships penetrated
to the province which was believed to be fabu-
lous: he returned bearing substantial proofs in the
shape of many precious things and particularly of
gold.” Again, on the 1st of October, this time
from Milan, Martyr wrote to the Archbishop of
Braga : “ A certain Columbus has sailed to the West-
ern Antipodes, even as he believes to the very
shores of India. He has discovered many islands
beyond the eastern ocean adjoining the Indies,
which are believed to be those of which mention
has been made among cosmographers. I do not
wholly deny this, although the magnitude of the

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

53

globe seems to suggest otherwise, for there are not
wanting those who think it but a small journey
from the end of Spain to the shores of India.”
Finally, on January 31, 1494, our letter- writer
addresses these words to the Archbishop of Gra-
nada: “The King and Queen at Barcelona have
created an Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Columbus
returned from his most honorable charge, and they
have admitted him to sit in their presence, which is,
as you know, a supreme proof of benevolence and
honor with our Sovereigns.”

But, anticipating rumors, reports, and letters,
Columbus himself had had a word to say respect-
ing his voyage. Writing from shipboard, on Feb-
ruary 15, 1493, to Luis de Santangel, his stanch
advocate with Isabella, he had declared: “When

I reached Juana [Cuba] I followed its coast west-
wardly and found it so large that I thought it
might be the mainland province of Cathay.”

As a matter of fact, however, interest in this
exploit on the part of Columbus attached itself less
to the geographical discoveries than to the preter-
natural creatures that lurked on the margins of the
earth. Hannibal Januarius, our Italian acquaint-
ance of epistolary bent, remarked to his brother,

54

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

apropos of the Genoese navigator, that “the earth
being round the latter should certainly arrive in
the eastern regions.” But forgetful, near the end
of his letter, of the scientific aspects of the great
voyage, Januarius wrote: “He [Columbus] adds
that he has lately been in a country where men are
born with tails.” Nor was the soft impeachment
wholly inaccurate, for, in his own shipboard letter
to Santangel, the Admiral said: “There remains
for me on the western side [of Cuba] two provinces
whereto I did not go — one of which they call
Anan — where the people are born with tails.”
And in his Journal Columbus had already noted
that “far away” there were, as he understood,
“men with one eye, and others with dogs’ noses
who were cannibals.” But he was wary in state-
ment, for in the Santangel letter he concluded the
subject by remarking that “down to the present
[he had] not found in those islands [the Antilles]
any monstrous men as many expected.”

With regard to mermaids it was different. These
the Admiral had himself seen, both on the coast of
Guinea and in the Antilles. The Antillean sirens,
as he had seen them, were three in number. ‘ ‘ They
rose well out of the sea” but were “not so beauti-
ful as painted, though having to some extent the

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 55

human face.” And Columbus believed in Ama-
zons. He had never beheld any, but had been told
they lived in the island of Martinino [Martinique],
and he had meant to stop there on his way home to
secure a few to exhibit, along with his Indians, to
Ferdinand and Isabella.

His half-dozen Indians, his forty gorgeous
parrots, his spined iguana, and his gold — of the
latter not more than enough to whet a royal appe-
tite— together with stories about “mermaids,”
and natives who burnt a queer herb, “tabacos,”
were about all in the way of wonders, ocular or
auricular, that Columbus had brought home with
him. The great thing, the super-epochmaking
thing, though not yet understood so to be, was
the voyage itself ; the voyage itself and the will to
make it. This, too, largely irrespective of whether
the objective was in some sort Asia, or simply a
Barataria, an island to govern.

Besides the voyage of 1492, Columbus made
three other voyages. On the second, which lasted
from September, 1493, to March, 1496, and was
undertaken with seventeen ships and fifteen hun-
dred men, including his brother Diego, he dis-
covered Porto Rico and Jamaica; learned that his
colony of 1492 at La Navidad had been totally

56

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

destroyed; and founded in its stead, in Espanola
(Hayti), the ambitious settlement of Isabella. He
also visited Cuba and compelled his entire ships’
company to make oath that they believed it to be
the mainland, the Alpha or beginning of the Indies.

The third voyage of Columbus from January,
1498, to October, 1500, was undertaken with’ six
ships and two hundred men, to test the opinion of
King John II of Portugal that to the south there
lay a continent; and the opinion was sustained,
for the voyage was signalized by the Admiral’s
greatest achievement next to that of 1492 — the
discovery of the mainland of America, at Paria,
near the mouths of the Orinoco. Mistaking the
land at first for an insular body, he soon came to
realize its true character. As early as July, 1498,
he wrote: “It is certain that the discovery of this

land in this place is as great a miracle as the dis-
covery on the first voyage”; and in August he thus
confided to his Journal: “I am convinced that
this is the mainland, and very large, of which no
knowledge has been had until now.” Later, in
October, when writing to Ferdinand and Isabella,
he said: “I think that if the river mentioned [the
Orinoco] does not proceed from the terrestrial
paradise, it comes from an immense tract of land

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

57

in the South, of which no knowledge has been
hitherto obtained.”

But meanwhile in Espanola conditions, social,
political, and economical, had become chaotic; and
in 1500 the Admiral was superseded as Governor
by Francisco de Bobadilla, who, stretching his au-
thority, arrested his predecessor, together with his
brother Bartholomew and his brother Diego, and
sent them to Spain in fetters. Promptly released
by the sovereigns, Columbus, after an affecting and
(on his part, we may be sure) eloquent scene with
Isabella, was released with the promise of a res-
toration of his privileges as defined in the Capitu-
lation and Letters Patent and was placed, so to
speak, on waiting orders.

By 1501 the Admiral had conceived the project
of a fourth voyage, to be made with four caravels
and one hundred and fifty men; but before setting
out, in 1502, he deposited his papers in safe keep-
ing, drafted his will, and wrote to the Bank of St.
George in Genoa, offering a tenth of his yearly
income for the reduction of food taxes in that
commonwealth. This last maritime enterprise
was shared by his brother Bartholomew and his
son Ferdinand, now a lad of fourteen, and had for
its main motive the disclosure of some avenue by

58 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

which Asia — that part of it where lay the riches
— might be attained. In short, Columbus had
now come to realize that thus far he had failed to
reach the country of the Great Kaan. He felt that
he must have reached Asia, but at a point lying
to the south of Cathay and India; and, as for
flanking the difficulty by penetrating to the south
yet further, an immense tract of land, “a main-
land,” interposed. Still, in the interposing mass
there must be a narrow place, and through this
a strait, for the currents that set westward from
Jamaica so indicated. It is to be observed that
on this voyage he pretty much ceased to concern
himself with Cipangu, so manifestly futile were all
attempts to identify it with Espanola.

For a full year Columbus skirted the coast of
Central America from Cariari in Nicaragua to the
site of Puerto Bello in Panamd, hearing of “ pepper ”
and of people in “rich clothing, ” of commerce, and
of the “river Ganges.” In November, 1504, he
returned to Spain, where Isabella, his patroness,
was at this time on her death-bed, so that his
many letters to the Spanish Court remained un-
acknowledged.

With some premonition of his own demise,
Columbus now busied himself with his last will,

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

59

charging liis son Diego to provide for the main-
tenance of Beatrix, “a person to whom I am under
great obligations; and let this,” he continues, 4 ‘be
done for the discharge of my conscience, for it
weighs heavy on my soul.” On May 20, 1506, at
Valladolid, broken, discouraged, and well-nigh
forgotten even in Spain, the discoverer of America,
Viceroy of the Indies, and Admiral of the Ocean,
breathed his last.

The discoverer of America strikingly illustrates
the aphorism that the world’s great men, so far
from having commonly been men of learning, have
often been but glorified enthusiasts. To Columbus
the South, the upper coast of South America at
the mouths of the Orinoco, meant the Terrestrial
Paradise of Sir John Mandeville, a spot where the
earth’s surface ceasing to be rounded* was pinched
into a stem, on the summit of which the Paradise
rested, and down the sides of which rolled such
mighty streams as the Orinoco. It meant also the
Golden Chersonese of Ptolemy (Malay Peninsula),
where in one year Solomon gathered 656 quintals
of gold and all manner of precious stones. It was
because of this South, so gravely misconceived by
him geographically, that Columbus, anticipating

60

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

the project of Magellan, entertained at the end of
his second voyage the idea of returning to Europe
by way of the Indian Ocean. “If he had had an
abundance of provisions, ” says his son Ferdinand,
“he would not have returned to Spain except by
way of the East.”

To say of Columbus that he was not conspicuous
for learning is but to repeat that his chief powers
were moral not intellectual. Patience, endurance,
tenacity, energy, and will — these, despite his igno-
rance, made him great. Cupidity and vanity, en-
tailing boastfulness and craft, we have noted as
his chief weaknesses ; but as to cupidity the record
is perhaps less vulnerable than it is at times rep-
resented. Throughout the years 1500 to 1504, the
years preceding and including his fourth voyage,
gold was to Columbus indeed a thing infinitely
precious — precious in itself but far more so as
the indispensable justification of his life and work.
Then it is that we find him writing: “Gold is
most excellent, gold is treasure, and he who pos-
sesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and
succeeds in helping souls into Paradise.”

Columbus was religious, formally and ceremo-
niously, albeit sincerely, religious. From an early
date — in fact, while at Granada before his first

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

61

voyage — he had embraced the idea of rescuing
the Holy Sepulcher from the Infidel. To this end
he was resolved, or so deemed himself, to devote
his profits from the Indies. And withal he was
eloquent. He waxed eloquent over the Holy
Sepulcher; and when, after his third voyage, he
was put upon waiting orders, alike to the impair-
ment of his revenues and the wounding of his
pride, he waxed eloquent over that injustice. “I
have arrived at and am in such a condition,” he
writes in 1500, “that there is no person so vile
but thinks he may insult me; he shall be reckoned
in the world as valor itself who is courageous
enough to consent to it. If I were to steal the In-
dies, or the land which lies toward them, of which
I am now speaking, from the altar of St. Peter and
give them to the Moors, they could not show
greater enmity toward me in Spain. Who would
believe such a thing where there was always so
much magnanimity? ... I undertook a fresh
voyage to the new heaven and earth which up
to that time had remained hidden; and if it is
not held there in esteem like the other voyages
to the Indies, that is no wonder because it came
to be looked upon as my work.”

His yet more famous letter, written in 1503 from

62

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Jamaica, on his fourth voyage, is the cry of a Wol-
sey left naked to his enemies: “I was twenty-
eight years old when I came into your Highnesses’
service, and now I have not a hair upon me that
is not gray; my body is infirm, and all that was
left to me, as well as to my brothers, has been
taken away and sold even to the frock that I wore,
to my great dishonor. ... I implore your High-
nesses to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in
as ruined a condition as I have related. Hither-
to I have wept over others — may Heaven now
have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep
over me. . . . Weep for me, whoever has charity,
truth, and justice!”

In the spirit of that charity, truth, and justice
which Columbus here invokes, let it be said that,
whatever his deflections from straightforwardness,
he was not alone therein in his age or profession.
Martin Behaim, Sebastian Cabot, and Amerigo
Vespucci — not one of them as a navigator dealt
honestly with his own age or with posterity. But,
points of character aside, what in the case of the
great Genoese most excites wonder, is not that
he discovered America but that America should
have remained to be discovered by him. The
expedition of Telles, or that of Dulmo and Estreito

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS

63

(Behaim), might well have reached the western
continent. As early as 1500, indeed, Vicente
Yanes Pinzon for Spain, and Pedralvarez Cabral
for Portugal, touched the coast of South America.

Furthermore, as the region which was discovered
by Columbus perpetuates, in the name Antilles,
the mythical island of Antiilia, so the region dis-
covered by Pinzon and Cabral perpetuates in the
name Brazil the mythical island of Brazil.

CHAPTER III

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

. . . when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific — • and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.

In his Espanola letter of October, 1498, to the Span-
ish sovereigns, Columbus told them two things:
first, that he had discovered the Earthly Para-
dise, which being on the top of the stem of the
earth was “near heaven” and unattainable “save
by God’s permission”; and, second, that at Paria
he had found pearls. The latter announcement
was the moving one, and in 1499 two private ex-
peditions set forth almost simultaneously to the
Pearl Coast, one piloted by Juan de la Cosa but
commanded by Alonso de Ojeda, a knight of truly
Spanish audacity, companion of Columbus in
1493; and the other commanded by Pero Alonso
Nino, one of Columbus’s pilots in 1493 and 1498.

64

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

65

The voyage of Nino, so far as the gathering of
riches was concerned, proved a success quite be-
yond anything achieved by Columbus, for it was
rewarded by quantities of pearls. Ojeda was less
successful in finding pearls, but he brought away
some two hundred natives to be sold as slaves.
In 1508 he was made Governor of the district of
Uraba, which extended from the Darien (Atrato)
River eastward to the Gulf of Venezuela and was
called Castilla del Oro. West of Uraba, as far as
Cape Gracias a Dios in Honduras, the coast, under
the appellation of Veragua, was in 1508 assigned
for government to Diego de Nicuesa, a rich and
accomplished planter of Espanola.

The significance of Ojeda and Nicuesa, however,
lies not so much in themselves as in their three
associates — Vespucci, Balboa, and Pizarro; es-
pecially in Balboa, the true precursor of Cortes,
with whom in a variety of respects he is not un-
worthy to be compared. As for Vespucci and
Pizarro, the latter we shall meet presently, and the
former need not long detain us. He was, be it said,
an alert Florentine who as contractor’s clerk had
seen to the outfitting of the ships for the second
voyage of Columbus, and who had accompanied
Ojeda on his pearl-seeking voyage of 1499. He

66 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

had made three other transatlantic voyages, the
third of which, by his literary handling of it in
letters printed in Latin in 1504 and 1507 (the
former under the title of Mundus Novus ) had
so established his fame that in 1507 Mundus No-
vus (South America) was beginning to be called
Amerige — Americ’s land or America.

But to revert to Balboa. Just as from the third
voyage of Columbus, renowned for its pearls, there
resulted the voyage of Ojeda, bringing to the main-
land of the Indies Vespucci, so in 1500 there re-
sulted the voyage of Rodrigo de Bastidas, bringing
Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Of Balboa prior to this
time we know only that he was a good “sword-
player,” born in 1474 or 1475 in Estremadura.
Luckless at sea with Bastidas, he had resorted to
farming in Espanola, and when, in November,
1509, Ojeda and Nicuesa started for their prov-
inces, he was restless to accompany one or other.
Debt kept him back, but he was resourceful, and
in September, 1510, when Ojeda’s lieutenant,
Martin Fernandez de Enciso, prepared to follow
his commander with supplies, Balboa, it is said,
contrived to get himself smuggled on shipboard
in a provision cask.

On the Venezuelan coast, near the present

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

67

Cartagena — for it was here that Enciso landed —
Balboa encountered Francisco Pizarro, a dutiful
soldier under Ojeda, with a boatload of Ojeda’s
men. From him it was learned that Ojeda, having
lost De la Cosa in a fight, and being himself seri-
ously wounded, had founded the refuge of San
Sebastian, and then had departed for Espanola for
succor. His colonists, meantime, desperate with
hunger, were roaming hither and yon in quest of
food. All straightway betook themselves to San
Sebastian, but only to find it burned. The ques-
tion then arose as to what should be done in cir-
cumstances so adverse.

In answer, up spoke Balboa. To the west of the
Gulf of Urabd was a region (Darien) abounding in
food; this he knew from having already visited
it under Bastidas. There, moreover, the Indians
used no poisoned arrows, missiles which had been
the undoing of the headlong Ojeda. Balboa was
of good stature, of knightly bearing, and of frank
address, and his words took effect. Ojeda’s colony
transferred itself to Darien, where it founded Santa
Maria la Antigua del Darien, and — being thus
within the country which pertained to Nicuesa —
promptly on Balboa’s suggestion deposed Enciso
and chose as alcaldes or judges Balboa and

68 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Martin Zamudio; and, as regidor or alderman, a
young nobleman, Juan de Valdivia.

Where, though, in the meantime was Nicuesa?
Ojeda had reached New Andalusia with three
hundred men and four small ships. Nicuesa had
appeared off Castilla del Oro with nearly seven
hundred men and five ships of large size, and was
now sailing to and fro looking for Columbus’s Vera-
gua, the Golden Chersonese, but to no issue except
the loss of ships and the drowning and starving
of his men. Marooned at length upon desert sand,
Nicuesa himself and sixty half-naked followers
embraced despair. Some muttered, some raved,
some in fierce irony laughed aloud. “A jest it was,
ha! ha! a merry jest, to adventure life for gold,
for lands, and to rule one’s fellows!” Nicuesa
was finally found and brought back to Darien
by his lieutenant. But the colony, which was orig-
inally Ojeda’s, distrusted Nicuesa and in March,
1511, putting him on board a leaky brigantine,
dispatched him to Spain, and that was the last
that they or any one heard of this overbearing
commander.

At this time Diego Columbus, elder son of Chris-
topher Columbus, presided over the Antilles as
Governor and Admiral, with residence in Espanola.

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

69

On the continent of America (Tierra Firme), which
now comprised Central America and Mundus
Novus (South America), no one presided. Oppor-
tunity, therefore, called for a ruler in Tierra Firme
and not in vain, for there was a man to respond —
by name Vasco Nunez de Balboa. All he lacked
was legal authorization. To obtain this, being so
far from Spain, he must do mighty deeds, make
himself potent and indispensable. And this he set
himself to do. First, he deported Enciso to Spain,
sending with him, to offset a possible misrepresen-
tation of his action, the alcalde Zamudio. In the
same ship, but commissioned to stop in Espanola
and solicit the favor of Don Diego, he sent Valdivia.
Don Diego proved malleable and soon appointed
Balboa his lieutenant.

Thereupon Balboa shaped a career for conquest
and discovery — a career in which two points that
stand out are his recognition of Pizarro and his
employment of blooded dogs. Francisco Pizarro
was an Estremaduran, like Balboa, and of about the
same age. He was ambitious, yet peculiar from
the fact that in a period of restless competition
he was content to bide, to serve, and to be ever
dutiful. With regard to the dogs, they were no new
thing with the Spaniard. Bartholomew Columbus

VO THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

had used them in Espafiola, though not quite as
Balboa was to use them in Darien. Their breed
was of the best, and their fangs were deadly, but
they were sagacious and under firm discipline.

Gold was Balboa’s object but the prime im-
mediate requisite was food. Careta, cacique of
Cueva, a district to the west of Santa Maria,
possessed both gold and food, and he possessed,
furthermore, a daughter. Balboa attacked the
village of Careta and carried the cacique and his
attractive daughter prisoners to Santa Maria.
Here, in turn, the captor himself was made cap-
tive, for he fell in love with the daughter, and
formed with Careta an alliance against that ca-
cique’s enemy, Ponca.

To the west of Careta lay a rich and populous
country of the Atlantic seaboard, ruled by a
cacique, Comogre, who, to the amazement of the
Spaniards, occupied a house constructed of posts
and stone, with carved woodwork. An under-
standing with Comogre became practicable
through the understanding with Careta, and
momentous did it prove. It made of Balboa
a discoverer, a world discoverer, the discoverer
of the South Sea or Pacific Ocean — an achieve-
ment which, had it only come a little sooner, would

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

71

in all probability have brought with it the con-
quest of Peru.

Comogre had seven sons, one of whom, Panciaco,
was of marked intelligence. From him Balboa
learned of a cacique dwelling beyond a high sierra
on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Darien and
possessed withal of much gold. This gold Balboa
resolved to see — the “baskets full,” the “bags
full,” the large “vessels” out of which the people
ate and drank. And he would see also the new
strange waters beyond the sierra, where, according
to report, were ships with sails and oars but little
less in size than those of the Spaniards themselves.
The difficulty confronting Balboa was that such
an adventure required many men, all seasoned
and well equipped — a thousand, Panciaco said, —
whereas the Spaniard had but a few hundred, and
these meager for lack of food.

So pressing, indeed, was the demand for food in
Darien that in January, 1512, Valdivia, back from
Espafiola, was again sent forth, this time expressly
for provisions and to carry to Diego Columbus a
letter telling of the great southward-lying sea and
imploring the thousand men necessary for the
seizure of its golden littoral. Nor was this all, for
Balboa himself made an incursion into the country

72 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of the cacique Dabaiba — a country not only by
report an El Dorado but, what was more, one
known to be stocked abundantly with grain.

Time sped and it now was October, 1512. Food
had again run low, and men and equipment were
as scarce as before. Valdivia had failed to return,
nor had Espanola been otherwise heard from. But
the determination of Balboa to establish himself
in power by a successful South Sea venture re-
mained unshaken. Commissioners were sent to
Spain to unfold the situation to the King and to
solicit aid of him directly. Hardly had they gone
when two ships arrived from Diego Columbus
bringing provisions and one hundred and fifty
men. But they brought something even more
important, and that was news - — news from Spain.
Zamudio wrote that, roused by Enciso’s recital
of the wrongs suffered by Nicuesa, King Ferdi-
nand had ordered, first, that Balboa be brought
home under criminal indictment; and, second,
that Enciso himself be granted indemnification.
Presumably Zamudio wrote also of a rumor
that the King had in mind to appoint a Governor
for Darien.

At any rate Balboa deemed it imperative to try
to gain personally the royal ear, and on January

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

73

20, 1513, he addressed to Ferdinand his celebrated
letter of exculpation, description, and appeal :

I desire to give an account to your most Royal Highness
of the great secrets and marvelous riches of this land
of which God has made your most Royal Highness the
Lord, and me the discoverer before any other. . . .
That which is to be found down this coast to the west-
ward is the province called Careta, which is twenty
leagues distant. . . . Further down the coast, at a
distance of forty leagues from this city [Santa Maria],
and twelve leagues inland, there is a cacique called
Comogre. ... In the mountains [to the southward]
there are certain caciques who have great quantities
of gold in their houses. It is said these caciques store
their gold in barbacoas like maize, because it is so abun-
dant that they do not care to keep it in baskets; that all
the rivers of these mountains contain gold; and that
they have very large lumps in great abundance. . . .
I, Sire, have myself been very near these mountains,
within a day’s journey, but I did not reach them because
I was unable to do so, owing to the want of men. . . .
Beyond these mountains the country is very flat toward
the south, and the Indians say that the other sea is at a
distance of three days’ journey. . . . They say that
the people of the other coast are very good and well
mannered ; and I am told that the other sea is very good
for canoe navigation, for that it is always smooth, and
never rough like the sea on this side, according to the
Indians. I believe that there are many islands in that
sea. They say that there are many large pearls, and
that the caciques have baskets of them. ... It is a

74

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

most astonishing thing and without equal, that our Lord
has made you the lord of this land.

Then he asked for a thousand men from Es-
pafiola; for materials for the building of small ships
— “pitch, nails, ropes and sails”; for “master
shipwrights” and for arms — “200 crossbows with
very strong stays and fittings and with long ranges,
two dozen good handguns of light metal to weigh
not more than twenty-five to thirty pounds”; and
for “good powder.”

None of Balboa’s demands, however, were to be
granted. Indeed, by the time his commissioners
reached Spain in May, 1513, it is probable that the
decision had been made to supersede him. Of this,
as we have seen, he had received intimation, and,
with or without men and munitions, he must act.
Upon his action depended everything: his fame,
his fortune, and his life.

Balboa set forth on September 6, 1513, from
Careta’s country (Caledonia Bay) directly south-
ward across the Isthmus of Darien to the Gulf
of San Miguel. With him he took one hundred
and ninety Spaniards. He took, also, hundreds of
Indian slaves as attendants and burden bearers.
Careta’s daughter was still his spouse, and through

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

75

this fortunate connection he obtained provisions
and guides. The arms of his men were the usual
swords, crossbows, and arquebuses; but more for-
midable than all other means of foray were the
dogs, the bloodhounds.

The distance to be traversed was not great —
about forty-five miles — but the obstacles were as
formidable as the distance was trifling. A cacique
named Quarequd proved the most redoubtable foe,
and fell upon the Spaniards with a confident and
yelling host. He was, however, quickly put to
flight by the discharges from the crossbows and
arquebuses; and after the fleeing men leaped the
dogs. Then, drawing their swords, the Spaniards
(according to Peter Martyr) made bloody havoc,
“hewing from one an arme, from another a legge,
from him a buttocke, from another a shoulder,
and from some the necke from the bodie at one
stroke.”

The country at first was a succession of streams
and swamps, screened by interlacing vines and
creepers, the home of gorgeous flowers and brilliant
birds, but no less the dwelling-place of countless
chattering monkeys and inconvenient reptiles.
Everywhere stretched forests of trees, stupendous,
dark, and so festooned as to be almost impenetrable

76 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

even to the ax. At length the journey was over.
On the 25th of September, Balboa was at the base
of an elevation which his guides told him looked
upon the sea of the south — the Mar del Sur, as
the Spaniards long henceforth were to call it.
Some sixty-six or sixty-seven men only were equal
to the ascent. With these Balboa clambered to a
point near the summit. Bidding them pause, the
ambitious explorer went “ himself e,” says Peter
Martyr, “alone to the toppe.” Here he looked
long and prayed ; then he beckoned to his men, who
gathered about him and stared at the Pacific.

Among the number thus silent upon a peak in
Darien was Francisco Pizarro. To him the situa-
tion was a congenial one. Duty had been per-
formed and there was no need for utterance. But
what were his thoughts? In the “golden vessels”
said to be used by Tubanama, did he surmise
anything of Peru? Quite likely not. Still, distant
regions of a new civilization were now and again
heard of in Darien. Once a refugee from “the
great landes farre towarde the West” came upon a
Spanish official reading, and, starting with surprise,
exclaimed: “You, also, have books!”

But this by the way. Pizarro, the dutiful cap-
tain, was now straightway sent forward by Balboa

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

77

to discover the shore of the sea they had gazed
upon, and on September 29, 1513 — St. Michael’s
day — Balboa himself, with drawn sword and
uplifted banner, advanced to meet the tide. They
stood facing a gulf, and in honor of the day they
named it San Miguel. And here there came to
the Spaniards an unmistakable intimation of Peru.
Tumaco, cacique of one of the gulf tribes, replying
to questions by Balboa as to the extent of this new
coast, told him that the mainland extended to
the south without end, and that far in that direc-
tion dwelt a nation fabulously rich, who sailed the
ocean in ships and used beasts of burden. To illus-
trate the beasts, he formed from clay the figure of
the llama, which seemed a kind of camel. “This,”
says Herrera, the Spanish historian, “was the
second intimation Vasco Nunez [and we may add
Francisco Pizarro] had of Peru.”

In 1513 Darien was still to explorers, as it had
been to Columbus, the Malay Peninsula, the
Golden Chersonese, the approach to India. “It is
thought,” notes the indefatigable Martyr, “that
not far from the colony of San Miguel lies the
country where the fruitfulnesse of spice beginneth.”
To dispel this illusion there was required the voy-

78

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

age of Magellan, a voyage not merely to America
but through America and beyond it. Prior to the
time of this voyage in 1519-1522, America was
thought of only as a part of the continent of Asia.
Magellan detached America and gave it an inde-
pendent existence.1

But at the time of the discovery of the South
Sea itself Columbus’s idea of America as a land
appurtenant and subsidiary to Asia prevailed, and
had Balboa reached Peru or Mexico he would have
believed himself in India. Even by Cortes, Mexico
was thought to be the Golden Chersonese.

After discovering the Gulf of San Miguel and
finding Isla Rica, rich in pearls, Balboa turned
northward and reached Santa Maria on January
19, 1514. Here the whole people welcomed him
and eagerly viewed his treasure. For once in the

1 Nearly two years after the discovery of America it became neces-
sary to adjust the claims of Spain and Portugal to territories in the
West, and, as a result of negotiations, a line was fixed by the Treaty of
Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, bisecting the earth at 370 leagues west of
the Cape Verde Islands. To the east of this line, what might be found
was to belong to Portugal; to the west of it, to Spain. It was the idea
of Magellan, sailing in the service of Spain, as it had been that of
Columbus, that the Spice Islands and China could be reached by way
of the west; but it was not his idea that Asia had been found in
America. He expected to pass through America by an interoceanic
strait and to gain the Spice Islands somewhere in the South Sea
beyond.

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

79

Indies, however, treasure to the Spaniards was a
thing of secondary account. The new sea was
what these men cared about. The Mar del Sur —
what of it? From Darien Balboa dispatched Pedro
de Arbolancha as a special messenger to Ferdinand
with the great news. And, as typical of the new sea
and of the auriferous realms whereto supposedly it
was tributary, he entrusted to his messenger by way
of gift for the King not merely gold but two hundred
lustrous pearls, the fruit of the waters of this great
southern sea.

But if tales of wealth in the West had given to
Balboa his rise, similar tales were to contribute to
his fall. A story gained currency that in Darien
the natives were accustomed “to fish for gold with
nets.” The prospect of such fishing appealed with
special force to an elderly gentleman of Segovia —
Pedro Arias de Avila; and, as Balboa was to be
displaced, and Arias (or Pedrarias as he is known)
had money and friends, he was made Governor
with jurisdiction reaching from the Gulf of Mara-
caibo to Cape Gracias a Dios.

The expedition of Pedrarias set sail from San
Luear on April 11, 1514. Prior to this time one
of the greatest expeditions to leave Spain for
the Indies had been the second commanded by

80 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Columbus, which had sailed from Cadiz in 1493. In
point of eminence, however, the names connected
with the expedition of Pedrarias outshone those of
its early predecessor in high degree. There were,
for example, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, who
together with Las Casas had beheld the triumph
of Columbus after his first voyage; Francisco Vas-
quez Coronado de Valdes, Quixotic and chivalric
seeker after the Seven Cities of Cibola; Hernando
de Soto, discoverer of the Mississippi; and Bernal
Diaz del Castillo, companion-to-be of Cortes and
rugged chronicler of his deeds.

Many adventurers, some two thousand men who
were anxious to go, had to be left behind for want
of room. Those taken numbered about fifteen
hundred, and the show they made was brilliant
enough. Largely they were young nobles and
gentlemen who had expected to follow Gonsalvo
de Cordoba to the Italian wars, and they came
wearing their silks and brocades and provided with
gleaming armor for which they had gone heavily
into debt. “Upon the imagination of such,”
writes Washington Irving, “the very idea of
an unknown sea and splendid empire broke with
the vague wonders of an Arabian tale.” Finally,
Pedrarias brought with him his wife, the resolute

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

81

Isabel de Bobadilla, and a bishop for Darien —
the first prelate of Tierra Firme — Juan de Que-
vedo. Both the lady and the bishop, it is worthy
to be remarked, fell under the sp^ll of the gallan-
try of Vasco Nunez de Balboa.

As for Pedrarias himself, he was skillful with
the lance and had fought against the Portuguese
and the Moors, but was now elderly and somewhat
infirm. In temper he was arbitrary and wily.
Sir Arthur Helps deems him “a suspicious, fiery,
arbitrary old man”; an epigrammatic American
thinks he had a “swarthy soul”; and even John
Fiske pronounces him “a green-eyed, pitiless,
perfidious old wretch.” His first business was to
arrest Balboa and bring him to trial for misdeeds
against Enciso and Nicuesa; but the charges fell
flat, save that Enciso, who had been given office
under Pedrarias, was awarded civil damages for
loss of property.

Then for a period Balboa was ignored, and the
followers of Pedrarias, mad for gold, were let loose
upon the Isthmus. Between June 30, 1514, and
January, 1517, a dozen expeditions, sent ostensibly
to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific,
ravaged the country. The cruelties inflicted up-
on the natives were monstrous. “Some,” says

82

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Oviedo, “were roasted, others were mangled by
dogs, others were hanged.” Driven to desperation,
the Indians at length turned upon their persecu-
tors. Spaniards when caught were not only slain
but were tortured to death. Legs and arms were
severed by sharp stones, or the captive was bound
and gagged and molten gold was poured down
his throat, the Indians meanwhile in mockery
bidding the helpless Christians, “Eat, eat, and
take your fill !”

On leaving his ships, Pedrarias had sought to
impress the Darien settlers with his might and
magnificence. But the silken and brocaded lords
and gentlemen who so largely constituted his
retinue had not turned out well. Disease and
famine had fast laid hold upon them, forcing them
to barter scarlet tunics for corn or to feed on
herbage or to drop exhausted in the wilderness
until “their souls deserted them” — full seven
hundred of them.

Still these untoward circumstances, bad as they
were, were not what exasperated Pedrarias most.
At his side — inactive, but observing, cogitative,
and critical — stood Balboa, whom nothing es-
caped. Writing to the King on October 16, 1515,
Balboa, with a touch of the style of Mark Antony,

Er a. v~u r e A n dsr sen—L ami Co.N . X

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 83

describes the Governor as “an honorable man,”
but one who “takes little heed of the interest of
your Majesty, and one in whom reigns all the
envy and avarice in the world.” Alluding to
the cruelties to the Indians, he calls them “the
greatest ever heard of in Arabian or Christian
country,” and says that whereas these Indians
“formerly were as sheep, now they are as fierce
as wolves.”

Had Pedrarias been less unsuccessful in govern-
ing than he was, no single jurisdiction could have
continued to hold both him and Vasco Nufiez de
Balboa. They were incompatible beings, of whom
one must go down before the other. How true
this was became apparent when, early in 1515, the
full strength of Pedrarias’s resentment was evoked
through jealousy.

Balboa’s messenger, Arbolancha, who had been
sent to report to Ferdinand the discovery of the
South Sea, had reached Spain but shortly after the
departure of Pedrarias. With his gold, his pearls,
and his magic tales of Balboa’s preemption of the
realms of Ophir, Arbolancha quite won over Fer-
dinand, especially as Balboa had cost the Crown
nothing, whereas Pedrarias had cost it much.
Balboa was thereupon created Adelantado of the

84 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

South Sea and Captain-General of Cueva and
Panama under the nominal supervision of Pe-
drarias as Governor of Darien. The Governor
well knew that an adelantadoship, though techni-
cally a lieutenancy, was in reality a provincial
governorship — a kind of proconsulship — and
something which, in the hands of a Balboa, might
easily be transformed into a position of indepen-
dent power.

To Pedrarias two courses lay open. One was
to forestall the new Adelantado by going to the
Pacific seaboard himself. The other was to insti-
tute against him further public proceedings during
the pendency of which his commission might be
withheld. Emphasizing the first course, Pedrarias
sent Gaspar de Morales and Francisco Pizarro to
the west shore of the Gulf of San Miguel to seize
the Pearl Islands; and he sent yet farther west an
expedition which reached the peninsula of Parita.
He in person founded Acla on the Atlantic coast
near the site of the subsequent Caledonia Harbor,
and, through Gaspar de Espinosa, alcalde mayor
or chief judge of Darien, penetrated to the extreme
west as far as the Gulf of Nicoya in the present
Costa Rica.

The second course against Balboa, the with-

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

85

holding of his commission, proved wholly a failure,
for the Bishop of Darien, to whom it was of ne-
cessity disclosed, denounced it roundly in public
from the pulpit.

Events now moved apace. Balboa, after the
interview of Arbolancha with Ferdinand, received
a letter from the King, written in August, 1514,
informing him that Pedrarias had been instructed
to “treat him well.” With this assurance Balboa
had therefore resolved to make his adelantadoship
a reality by exploring the coasts of the South Sea
regardless of the Governor.

By secretly obtaining supplies from Cuba, Bal-
boa nearly brought about his own downfall, but the
situation was retrieved by Bishop Quevedo, who
persuaded Pedrarias (very possibly Dona Isabel
was here a factor) to become reconciled and give
to the courtly Balboa his eldest daughter, Dona
Maria, in betrothal. The arrangement, whatever
may have been the motive of Pedrarias in coun-
tenancing it, in nowise changed his feeling toward
Balboa — an instinctive jealousy and suspicion.
To Balboa, on the contrary, the arrangement was
not unpleasing. He still loved Careta’s daughter;
Doha Maria was at school in Spain; his marriage
with her could be deferred. Pedrarias meanwhile

86 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

could not well oppose the passage of the Adelan-
tado, his prospective son-in-law, to the latter’s
province on the Pacific.

What Balboa needed was ships. These, to the
number of four brigantines, he built from the
forest on the northern side of the sierra below
Acla; and thousands of impressed Indians carried
them in sections over the ridge to the waters of the
river Balsas (Sabana?), which flowed into the Gulf
of San Miguel. But the timbers proved rotten,
and the work of shipbuilding had to be done all
over again. Done, however, it finally was; and
Balboa stood exultant on the beach of Isla Rica
gazing seaward. The nights at this season were
clear, we are told, and a certain great star rode in
the heavens above. Now it seems that just after
Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific, a Venetian
traveling astrologer who was in Santa Maria had
pointed out to him the star, telling him that when
it attained in the heavens a definite point he was
to beware, as mortal peril faced him. The crisis
safely passed, he would be Fortune’s child — “the
greatest lord and captain in all the Indies, and
withal the richest.” Turning to friends who were
with him, Balboa on one occasion spoke of the star
and ridiculed the astrologer. “Have I not,” he

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

87

said, “three hundred men and four ships and the
countenance, officially, of Pedrarias ! ”

From time to time news had reached Darien that,
as Balboa had been superseded by Pedrarias, so the
latter was to be superseded by Lope de Sosa, act-
ing Governor of the Canary Islands. Such news,
now that Balboa was on working terms with Pe-
drarias, was not welcome to him, for a change in
governors might cause him delay. So the Adelan-
tado remarked to his notary that it would be well
to send to Acid to ascertain whether Lope de
Sosa were yet arrived. If he were, then Balboa
could not put to sea too soon. If he were not, some
much needed iron and pitch might be obtained,
and the preparations could be continued. Four
men composed the party to go to Acla: Andres
Garabito, Luis Botello, Fernando Munoz, and
Andres de Valderrabano. They were to make their
visit by night and to gather information from the
servant who would be found in Balboa’s house.

But the crisis foretold by the astrologer and
registered by the star had come. Garabito under
a dissembling exterior hated Balboa for having
admonished him against attempted familiarities
with Careta’s daughter. He had even written
to Pedrarias that Balboa cared naught for Dona

88 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Maria, to whom he was betrothed, and meant at
the earliest opportunity to renounce the Governor
personally as well as politically. Furthermore, the
remark of Balboa about a speedy putting to sea
had been overheard by a sentry, who, mistaking it
for treason, had so reported it to Garabito or
Botello. Finally, the period within which the
Adelantado was to be ready for sea, under agree-
ment with the Governor, had been much exceeded
and Pedrarias would not extend it; and when Bal-
boa’s chief financial backer, Fernando de Argiiello,
wrote advising a putting to sea at once, the letter
was intercepted.

Garabito and Botello on their nocturnal visit
to Acla were both apprehended, and what they
related to Pedrarias deeply implicated Balboa in
disloyalty and intrigue. How the story roused
Pedrarias, primitive Spaniard that he was, to a
cold fury, distinctly appears in the counter meas-
ures which he took. To Balboa he penned a be-
guiling letter, inviting him to come to Acla. To
Francisco Pizarro — the model subordinate, the
ever-dutiful one — he at the same time gave orders
to gather a force, meet Balboa, and arrest him.
The Adelantado came. Warnings he received,
but he disregarded them. Before he had crossed

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC

89

the sierra he was met by Pizarro’s force. The
leader himself stepped forward and made the
arrest. “It is not thus,” said Balboa, smiling
sadly, “that you were wont to come forth to re-
ceive me, Francisco Pizarro.”

Balboa’s trial was conducted by the alcalde
mayor or chief judge, Gaspar de Espinosa, and
the Adelantado’s entire record, from the days of
Enciso and Nicuesa, was admitted against him.
Even so he would have been allowed an appeal to
the Crown, had it not been for the Governor, who
would not assent to it.

At Santa Maria, in the plaza, a scaffold and
block were prepared, and early in the morning of
a day in January, 1519, Balboa was led forth in
chains. Before him walked the town crier ex-
claiming : “ B ehold the traitor and usurper ! ” “ ’Tis
false!” retorted Balboa, “never have I been dis-
loyal!” With this, he mounted the scaffold and
received the sacrament. His head was then cut
off upon a hatchment cloth and stuck upon a
pole. The same day, until past nightfall, were
beheaded in ghastly succession Valderrabano, Bo-
tello, Munoz, and Argiiello. Pedrarias, it is said,
witnessed the executions from behind the shelter
of a lattice; while as for Garabito, he reaped a

90 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

not uncommon reward of treachery in the salva-
tion of his own life.

Thus the third voyage of Columbus, the voyage
for pearls, brought about, as a first great result,
the occupation of that part of the mainland of
America now known as the Isthmus of Panama
and the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. As its
second great result, it brought about, though less
directly, the occupation of Mexico, a tale which
remains to be told.

CHAPTER IV

CORTES AND MEXICO

Where dwell the gods?

Where dwell the gods?

Oh dwell they in the sky?

The gods are always nigh.

Raymond: The Aztec God.

But what of the young nobleman — Valdivia? “O
you wretched men of Darien,” exclaims Peter
Martyr, “tarry for Valdivia whom you sent to
provide to helpe your necessities? Provide for
yourselves rather, and trust not to them whose
fortune yee know not.”

Juan de Valdivia, it will be remembered, had in
January, 1512, set out from Santa Maria of Darien
for Espanola to solicit of Don Diego Columbus a
supply of food. His return, long looked for, never
came. His ship was wrecked off Jamaica, and he
was carried in an open boat with a few followers

to the coast of Yucatan. Here he was seized by

91

92 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

the local cacique and with three others was sacri-
ficed to the gods, his heart being torn out and his
flesh eaten. Some of the company were kept
prisoners. One by one they died till two only were
left — Gonzalo Guerrero, a seaman, and Geronimo
de Aguilar, a friar — both of whom some eight
years later were found, as will be seen, by Cortes.

Columbus never reached Yucatan, but on his
first voyage he heard of the culture of a people
called the Mayas, who wore clothes and dwelt on
a mainland ten days’ journey in a canoe from Es-
panola; and on his fourth voyage he came, on July
30, 1502, into actual touch with this civilization,
near the island of Guanaja, off the coast of Hon-
duras. Here he encountered a monster canoe
provided with an awning and laden with merchan-
dise; a canoe bearing a cacique clad in loin cloth
and mantle; one, furthermore, which was being
propelled by a band of twenty-five Indians “well
clothed.” Nor was Columbus’s acquaintance with
the Maya culture limited to the sight of the canoe.
Near Cariari (Nicaragua) he personally visited a
mountain tomb, “as large as a house and elabo-
rately sculptured,” where there stood, or crouched,
as though peering within, the corpse of a Maya
Indian. He saw also, he tells us, “some large

CORTES AND MEXICO

93

sheets of cotton cloth elaborately and cleverly
worked, and other sheets [Maya manuscripts?]
very delicately painted.”

As compared with the Nahuas of Mexico (pre-
Aztec as well as Aztec), the Mayas of Yucatan
were an ancient, a peaceful, and a polished race;
and, like all races that have advanced as far
as barbarism, they were emphatically religious.
Their most characteristic deity, perhaps, was It-
zamna, god of the East or rising sun, inventor of
letters. But there was another sun deity, Ku-
kulcan, the most active and immanent of the Maya
gods. He was patron of arts and crafts, inculcator
of peace, and withal deprecator of human sac-
rifices — a god of order who, having founded cities,
had departed into the sunrise, whence he had
promised to return at a future time. War gods
there were in the Maya pantheon, but war and
religion, despite some human sacrifices, were not
the intimate blend that they were in Mexico.

If the death of Valdivia and his three fellow
unfortunates upon a heathen altar may be re-
garded as demanding of Heaven to be avenged,
vengeance nevertheless was somewhat delayed.
Valdivia died in 1512. Up to that time but little
had been done to subdue and occupy the Antilles

94

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

outside of Espafiola. In 1509 Diego Columbus had
sent a Governor to Jamaica, and in 1511 he had
made Diego Velasquez Governor of Cuba — aland
which Christopher Columbus had never recognized
as insular, but which had been officially demon-
strated so to be by a voyage of circumnavigation
effected by Sebastian de Ocampo in 1508. Velas-
quez was jocose and affable but at the same time
acquisitive and envious. To Cuba he took with
him, or soon summoned to follow him, Francisco
Hernandez de Cordoba, Juan de Grijalva, Bar-
tolome de las Casas, Panfilo de Narvaez, and
Hernan Cortes. Narvaez did the work of pacifica-
tion, while Velasquez founded Trinidad, Puerto
del Principe, Matanzas, Santo Espiritu, San Sal-
vador, Habana, and Santiago.

In 1516, because of the continued famine in
Darien, Governor Pedrarias gave leave to his silken
host, as many as wished, to go to Cuba, where
provisions were not lacking. And one hundred
and ten went. Velasquez met them cordially and
promised them land if they would wait for vacan-
cies, but they were tired of a passive r61e and
craved activity. Slave catching, though contrary
to law, was at this time practised in the island,
and it no doubt was with the profits from such an

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95

enterprise in view that the Darien arrivals made
ready an expedition which would serve as an out-
let for their energies. They chartered two ves-
sels, Velasquez, it is said, contributing a third,
and on February 8, 1517, with Hernandez de
Cordoba, now a rich planter of Santo Espiritu, as
captain, unfurled their sails from San Cristobal,
the old Habana.

Whither should they fare? Their chief pilot
counseled adventuring straight into the west, into
the region of the people who “wore clothes.” The
squadron, about the 1st or 2d of March, reached
the island of Las Mugeres (Island of Women),
and on the 4th landed at Point Catoche, the ex-
treme northeasterly limit of Yucatan. Their
next landing was at Champoton, in Campeche,
whence they tediously worked their way back to
San Cristobal by way of the peninsula of Florida.
On this expedition the Spaniards were roughly
handled by the natives. Both Cordoba and Bernal
Diaz were wounded, the former so severely that
soon after reaching Cuba he died. But the in-
vaders succeeded in bringing away two youths
whom they named, respectively, Melchor and
Julian, and to whom they taught Spanish, that
they might serve as interpreters.

96

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Foiled as to slave catching but curious regarding
Yucatan, the Cuban settlers by 1518 were ready
for a second adventure into the west, and this time
it was Velasquez who took the lead. He managed
to add two vessels to two others left from the ex-
pedition of Cordoba, enlisted some two hundred
and fifty men, and appointed Juan de Grijalva
commander-in-chief. Sail was made from San-
tiago de Cuba on the 8th of April, with Alaminos
once more as chief pilot, and on the 3d of May the
fleet gained, to the southward of Point Catoche, a
large island called Cozumel (Island of Swallows).
By the last of the month the expedition had passed
Lake Terminos, and by the 18th of June various
rivers of Tabasco, such as Rio de Grijalva and
Rio de Banderas, and various islands off Mexico,
including San Juan de Ulua and Isla de Sacrificios.
They made a landing where now stands the city
of Vera Cruz.

Grijalva, under the orders given him, might
trade in any regions discovered, but he might not
colonize, and, as the country everywhere by its
aspect invited to colonization, Alvarado on the
24th of June was permitted to sail for Cuba
to carry back the sick, report progress, and, if
possible, obtain permission to form settlements.

CORTES AND MEXICO

97

Meanwhile Grijalva followed the Mexican coast
as far north as Cape Rojo, whence, returning to
Yucatan, he sailed for Cuba, reaching Matanzas
about the 1st of November.

On both the Cordoba and Grijalva expeditions
the Spaniards were impressed by divers things, but
more than with anything else by the scenery, the
sacrificial mounds, and the stone temples. On
every island, and dotting the coast of the mainland,
were to be seen mounds pyramidal in form, as-
cended by stone steps, and surmounted by temple
towers of squat masonry. The towers gleamed
white, and over them floated the smoke of incense
and of sacrifice. At Campeche, Cordoba saw many
temples or “prayer-places” wetted within with
fresh blood. From each there swarmed angrily
forth half a score of priests, armed with braziers,
and clad in white mantles down which fell their
hair, long, black, and disheveled — so matted and
clotted with blood, from their own ears lacerated
in penance, that one strand could not be separated
from another. Indeed the farther to the west the
Spaniards fared — the closer their approach, that
is to say, to the Nahua tribes of Mexico as dis-
tinguished from the Maya of Yucatan — the more
the evidences of human sacrifices multiplied.

98

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

“Why, ” asked Grijalva of a Tabasco Indian, “this
ripping open of human bodies and offering of
bloody hearts to hungry gods?” “Because,” was
the reply, “ the people of Ulua [by which was meant
Mexico] will have it so.”

When, in November, 1518, Grijalva reached
Cuba — then called Isla Fernandina — he found
himself most undeservedly out of favor. He was
young, handsome, and chivalric, but above all
conscientious, so conscientious that Las Casas
tells us he would have made a good monk. Having
been ordered not to plant colonies, he had obeyed.
But obedience proved to be his undoing, for,
angered by it, his subordinates, particularly Alva-
rado, whom he had reproved, had misrepresented
him to Velasquez, and already that grasping ruler
had decided upon a new voyage in which Grijalva
was not to share.

For this new voyage Velasquez sought a com-
mander of quite supermundane qualities — one
astute and valiant enough to achieve rare deeds
and at the same time subservient enough to give
all the honors and emoluments to Velasquez.
The Governor, profiting by Grijalva’s labors, had
already on the 13th of November secured for him-
self the adelantadoship of all that “he had dis-

CORTES AND MEXICO

99

covered” in the West or “might thereafter dis-
cover” there, and his solicitude to make just the
right choice of a commander was intense. Then,
as not seldom in human affairs, stepped in Fate —
ironical, mocking Fate. To Diego Velasquez,
tremulous with apprehension lest he choose
wrongly for himself, Fate dictated the selection
of Hernan Cortes!

It has been said that the rise of Cortes was due
to the third voyage of Columbus; and the state-
ment is true in that his rise was part of the move-
ment following upon Columbus’s pearl discoveries
— a movement which, through Nicuesa and Ojeda,
begat Balboa; and, through Balboa, begat Pe-
drarias; and, through Pedrarias, those activities in
Cuba which resulted in the expeditions of Cordoba
and Grijalva. Apropos of Columbus, in this con-
nection, regret at times has found voice that it
was not he who conquered Mexico rather than
Cortes. There, it is said, he would have found
fulfillment of his dream of gold, if not of spicery,
in measure far more complete than in Asia and
India, for in the fifteenth century the Cathay of
Marco Polo, as also Polo’s Cipangu, were van-
ished things. But to each his task. The Mexican

100

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

conquest called for traits at least one of which,
ruthlessness, Columbus did not possess. It called,
that is to say, for the traits which were pecul-
iarly Spanish, and it called for all of them — for
ruthlessness, for pride, for devoutness, and for
romanticism. These traits, combined and co-
ordinated in a unique manner, belonged to Cortes.

Hernan Cortes was born in Medellin, in Estre-
madura, in 1485. His parents were — as who in
those days in Spain was not? — of noble descent
though poor. As he was delicate in health, he was
destined for the law. At fourteen he entered the
University of Salamanca, where he remained two
years, acquiring a smattering of Latin and some
ease in rhetoric. On leaving the university he
looked about him. He might join the banner of
the Great Captain, Cordoba, as had been the
frustrated purpose of so many of the followers
of Pedrarias, or he might go to the Indies. The
Indies were his choice, and thither in 1504 he took
passage.

This was the period just subsequent to the
coming of Nicolas de Ovando to Espafiola as
Governor, and Cortes after some hesitation was
induced by Ovando to become a planter. In 1510
he would have joined Nicuesa on his Veragua

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101

(Castilla del Oro) expedition, but was prevented
by an abscess under the right knee. In 1511 Diego
Velasquez, who admired his intelligence, took him
to Cuba as business adviser or private secretary.
Cortes was young and famed for his amorous
gallantries. According to reports not altogether
illuminating, his “affairs” in Cuba involved him
in discord with Velasquez. Catalina Suarez was
the name of one of his inamoratas, and her he
married. By 1518 Velasquez, despite differences,
had appointed him alcalde at Santiago de Cuba.
Cortes was now thirty-three. He was of medium
stature, compact and muscular, and had dark eyes,
good features, a short beard, and legs a trifle
bowed. Outwardly he was frank and vivacious,
but inwardly he was calculating and self-contained.

Since 1516 in Espanola, Diego Columbus, as
Admiral and Governor, had been under the super-
visory authority of three monks, known as the
Jeronimite Fathers, who had been sent to the
Indies at the instance of Las Casas to temper
somewhat with mercy the dealings of Spaniards
with the natives, and it was necessary to obtain
from them sanction for enterprises such as that
for which Velasquez had selected Cortes. Velas-
quez obtained the requisite sanction and, on the

102

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

23d of October, before Grijalva’s own return from
the west, he issued instructions authorizing (as
in Grijalva’s case) exploration but not colonization.

Cortes was now energy itself. He mortgaged
his estate; he secured a large contribution from
Velasquez; he stuck a plume in his bonnet; he
hoisted a banner; he issued proclamations. By
these means and by enacting throughout a jovial
role, he gathered out of Cuba and Jamaica eleven
vessels, 508 soldiers, and 109 seamen by February
10, 1519. But there were difficulties, and the
gravest of these was a distrust of Cortes which
was more and more perceptibly defining itself
in the mind of the Governor.

Like the chorus in the drama of antiquity, the
fool or jester of early modern drama performed a
work of prognosis. He forecast the issue. Such
a fool Diego Columbus had about him, officially,
in the person of a sharp-witted dwarf named
Francisquillo. This oracle, unlike the fool in Lear ,
did not say openly to his master: “Thou had’st
little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy
golden one away, ” but he said what was equivalent
to it. To Velasquez — as one day, along with
Cortes, he surveyed the harbor of Santiago alive
with the preparation of Cortes’s fleet — Francis-

CORTES AND MEXICO

103

quillo, who was capering about, exclaimed: “Have
a care, Diego, Diego, lest this Estremaduran
captain of yours make off with the fleet! ” Herein,
it is said, the distrust on the part of Velasquez
took its rise.

Cortes did not slink from Santiago with his ships
in the night. He left openly in the daytime after
embracing the Governor, but he was nevertheless
closely watched. Indeed Velasquez’s distrust of
him continued to grow, for he made frantic efforts
to supersede him at Trinidad and to stop him and
apprehend him at San Cristobal.

In his train Cortes took a notable band of Span-
ish gentlemen — ten stanch captains each in com-
mand of a company, with himself in command
of the eleventh. The arms carried were thirty-
two crossbows, thirteen firelocks, and an outfit
of swords and spears, the whole reenforced by ar-
tillery in the form of ten bronzed guns — breech-
loaders! — and four falconets. But above and be-
yond all else were sixteen noble horses, about which
more anon. The general rendezvous was Cape
San Antonio, the most westerly point of Cuba,
whence on the 18th of February the expedition —
all save Pedro de Alvarado’s ship, which was driven
aside by tempest — set its prows for Cozumel.

104 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

At this time there was no knowledge in the
Indies of the fate of the Valdivia party, but on
the Cordoba expedition Indians of Campeche had
saluted the Spaniards with the word “Castilan,”
and this was deemed significant. At any rate after
much inquiry on the Yucatan coast and much dis-
patching of messengers inland, Aguilar appeared,
though Guerrero did not. Provided thus with a
reliable interpreter — for Melchor and Julian had
proved wanting and Aguilar was willing — Cortes
early in March set sail with his fleet for the coun-
try of the cacique Tabasco.

The halting point of the Spaniards was an island
in the Tabasco or Grijalva River, but when they
sought to establish themselves on the mainland,
christened by Cortes “New Spain,” they were
vigorously withstood. A fight took place on the
25th of March, and fortune was turned in favor of
the Spaniards and against overwhelming bodies of
Indians by the artillery and the horses.

In Darien, where the natives were lower in the
scale of barbarism than in Yucatan and Mexico,
Balboa had already won triumphs by the aid of
powerful dogs. But to the east of the Gulf of
Uraba, that region of the poisoned arrow, dogs
had not been found effective; and in Yucatan

CORTES AND MEXICO 105

and Mexico — where the missiles most in use were
darts, javelins, slingstones, and the obsidian-
edged sword-club or macuahuitl — dogs, save for
hunting purposes, were eschewed. What in Darien
was accomplished by the dog was accomplished in
the region farther west by the horse.

At Tabasco, or rather on the plain of Ceutla
near by, the horses, supported by the cannon,
therefore won the day. The Indians, who
“covered the whole plain,” who “wore great
feather crests” and “quilted cotton armor,” who
carried “drums and trumpets” and rained upon
their foe arrows, javelins, and stones, were finally
hemmed in between the Spanish guns, which
ploughed through their masses, and the Spanish
horse, who under Cortes himself speared them
down, and so were brought to a stand. In the eyes
of the terrorized barbarians the guns with their
thunder and lightning were a marvel; but the
horsemen were a greater marvel still, for they were
each a living monster, horse and rider, in the words
of Bernal Diaz, “being all one animal.”

It was at the close of this battle that the Tabas-
cans, suing for peace, brought to Cortes twenty
young women, among them Dona Marina, as she
came to be known — “a truly great chiefteness,

106 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

a daughter of caciques and a mistress of vassals.”
Marina was Aztec, but as a little girl had been
given by her mother to the Indians of Tabasco in
order to make way for the succession of a half-
brother to the headship of her tribe. Cortes at
first did not bestow upon her especial notice,
merely assigning her to “a distinguished gentle-
man.” What made her fortune was her knowledge
of both Nahua and Maya speech, combined with
her intelligence. The rescued Aguilar, who spoke
the Maya of Yucatan and Tabasco, readily under-
stood the Maya of Tabasco as spoken by Marina.
So, as it proved, the chain of tongues indispensable
to Cort6s was complete — Marina translating Az-
tec Nahua into Tabascan Maya, which Aguilar in
turn put into Castilian Spanish.

Cortes, who no less than Columbus was devout,
spent Palm Sunday of the year 1519 at Tabasco,
where a religious procession was held and mass
was sung, and where the Indians were stoutly
exhorted to give up their bloody sacrifices and
idols. The fleet then set sail and by Holy Thurs-
day was at the island of San Juan de Ulua. Here
the Spaniards first came to a definite knowledge of
the existence and importance of Montezuma. It

CORTES AND MEXICO

107

is true that at Tabasco Grijalva had heard of a
Culua, or Ulua, “where there was plenty of gold”;
but, in the words of the chronicler, “we did not
know what this Culua could be.”

At San Juan de Ulua the fleet of Cortes lay at
anchor, its fiery purpose clothed, as some one has
said, in dissembling white. Hardly had it assumed
its position when from two large canoes there
ascended to the deck of the flagship a group of
Indians. Asking for the Tlatoan, or Chief, they
did him reverence, but beyond this they were
unable to make themselves understood. There-
upon Marina, who with other slave girls was
standing by, said to Aguilar that the Indians
were Mexicans sent by the cacique Cuitlalpitoc,
a servant of Montezuma, and that he wished to
know whence the strangers had come and why.
So was begun a series of interchanges between
Cortes and the overlord of Culua or Mexico —
interchanges conducted on the part of the one
with veiled though ever mounting audacity, and
on the part of the other with veiled though ever
deepening apprehension.

For more than a fortnight Cortes encouraged
the coming of embassies — “for trade.” First
came Cuitlalpitoc accompanied by his superior,

108 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Teuhtlilli; and with them they brought cotton
fabrics done in brilliant feather designs — ten
bales of them — as also articles of wrought gold
set with rare stones. In return Cortes gave a
carved and inlaid armchair, some engraved stones,
a crimson cap, beads, and a gilt helmet which
Teuhtlilli had wondered at and was told to bring
back filled with gold dust. The Spaniard asked
also for a time and place to be fixed at which he
might meet Montezuma.

Then, in due season, came a second embassy,
one headed by a cacique named Quintalbor, who
in looks resembled Cortes. With Quintalbor came
Teuhtlilli; and this time, besides cotton fabrics
embroidered in feathers and gold, there were
brought large plumes of bright colors spangled
with gold and pearls; great feather fans; rods of
gold like a magistrate’s staff ; collars and necklaces
with pendant golden bells; head-dresses of green
quetzal feathers and gold, or of feathers and silver;
miniature golden fish; alligators, ducks, monkeys,
pumas, and jaguars; a graceful bow with twelve
sharp arrows — all these things, to say naught of
Nahua books executed in picture-writing upon
cotton or bark. Nor yet were these things all, for,
dominating the entire collection, were a wheel of

CORTES AND MEXICO 109

gold as large as a cart-wheel, a wheel of silver
equally large (the twain worth in American money
of today some $290,000), and the helmet at which
Teuhtlilli had wondered filled with grains of gold
fresh from the placers.

The object of this second embassy was clearly to
bribe Cortes into leaving the country, for, to his
wish again earnestly expressed to visit Montezuma
many objections were courteously interposed. The
refusal indeed was soon made pointed and explicit,
for Teuhtlilli, having gone through the form of
carrying to his lord the Spanish leader’s reiterated
request, came back after ten days bearing a
quantity of robes, feathers, and gems as a gift to
be carried by Cortes personally to his own over-
lord, the Spanish King.

Having thus “felt out” Montezuma and his
magnificence, Cortes saw his goal before him.
But could he reach it? Reach it he must if he
would escape outlawry. Already he had broken
with Velasquez, for at Tabasco he had taken
possession in the name of the King alone. His
position was like that of Balboa after he had de-
ported Enciso and had heard of the golden-shored
Pacific. He must seize his opportunity. He must
do or die.

110 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

As a first step Cortes resolved upon a new basis
for his expedition. The soldiers must become a
Spanish colony looking immediately to the King.
Over this colony he himself must be chosen Cap-
tain-General and Justicia Mayor. As such he
could found a settlement, taking care by destroy-
ing his fleet to remove from his followers all tempta-
tion to resume relations with Cuba and Velasquez.
Even so, however, the situation for Cortes was
fraught with difficulty. Assuming the successful
establishment of direct relations with Charles V,
successor to Ferdinand on the Spanish throne, how
about the Indians? What would be their attitude
toward the appropriation of Montezuma’s wealth
by the arrogant white strangers — the white
strangers from out the sunrise? But just here a
stroke of fortune !

Across the sand dunes above the San Juan de
Ulua anchorage, came one day, soon after the de-
parture of the last of the embassies from Monte-
zuma, five Indians. They were not Aztec, but two
of their number spoke Nahua, and by aid of Marina
and Aguilar it was quickly learned that they were
Totonacs, subject to Montezuma and hating him
with a deadly fear. Their principal settlement,
Cempoalla, was a short distance inland to the

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111

north, and here, eager for a conference with the
white chieftain, waited their cacique. Into the
hands of Cortes was given a possible solution of his
difficulty, and he was not slow to perceive it.

Cortes approached Cempoalla overland with
four hundred men and two light guns; while the
fleet ascended the coast some ten leagues to a
harbor called Bernal, discovered by Francisco de
Monte jo. At the anchorage opposite San Juan de
Ulua — the present Vera Cruz — it was not only
hot and damp, but according to Bernal Diaz “there
were always there many mosquitoes, both long-
legged ones and small ones.” The way to Cem-
poalla wound through tropical forest filled with
birds of startling plumage and dominated through-
out by the snow-crowned peak of Orizaba, “Star
Mountain,” gleaming in majesty to the south and
west. As for the settlement itself, it was the first
great town, the product of barbarism, which the
Spaniards had seen. From out a plaza rose
towered temples on pyramidal foundations; while
the sides of the square were formed by terrace-
roofed buildings of stone and adobe, the whole
brilliant with white stucco.

Cempoalla was dazzling, but no less was it
beautiful. Not only did it shine like silver, of

112 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

which some of the Spaniards at first thought it to
be constructed, but its houses were embowered in
green, and against this green and the white walls
beneath glowed the massed colors of tropical
flowers. Roses in particular abounded. As the
Spaniards entered and marched along, they were
met by deputations which showered roses upon the
horsemen. To Cortes some handed bouquets,
while others flung rose garlands about his neck or
placed wreaths on his helmet. The foot-soldiers,
too, were remembered, for to them were given
pineapples, cherries, juicy zapotes, and aromatic
anonas. The palace or official abode of the ca-
cique was at length reached, and, though that per-
sonage was very sedate, he was so corpulent and
shook so when he walked that the Spaniards could
not be restrained from laughing at him.

Hardly had Cortes arrived in the Cempoallan
district when proof of the dread which the overlord
of Ulua or Mexico inspired was dramatically re-
vealed. Five of Montezuma’s tribute men ap-
peared. Haughty and insolent was their mien, and
upon them the Cempoallans attended like slaves.
“Their shining hair,” says Bernal Diaz, “was
gathered up as though tied on their heads, and each
one was smelling the roses that he carried, and

CORTES AND MEXICO 113

each had a crooked staff in his hand.” The mean-
ing of the visit was that Montezuma resented the
fact that Cempoalla was entertaining the white
strangers, especially as by the last embassy sent to
Cortes it had been made plain that their presence
in Mexico was no longer desired. Expiation,
therefore, was demanded, and of the Cempoallan
youth, men and maids, twenty must accompany
the tribute men to Ulua and yield their hearts upon
the altar.

Cortes’s purpose in Cempoalla was to cement an
alliance with the Totonacs, yet to avoid as long as
possible a break with the lord of Ulua. He secretly
ordered the Cempoallans to throw Montezuma’s
envoys into prison and to withhold tribute. At
the same time he ingratiated himself with Mon-
tezuma by covertly liberating the prisoners and
sending them to their lord with the tale of their
deliverance at his hands. Montezuma therefore
reopened relations with the Spanish leader by
sending a further embassy bearing presents.
Upon this delegation Cortes wrought with great
effect by resorting to his never failing dependence
— the horse. Verily, to the Mexicans, the neck
of the horse was “clothed with thunder”; “the
glory of his nostrils was terrible”; “he swallowed

s

114 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

the ground with fierceness and rage, and said
among the trumpets ‘ha! ha!’”

Having concluded an alliance with the Totonacs,
Cortes founded in June, 1519, in Bernal Harbor his
projected settlement, the town of Villa Rica de la
Vera Cruz; and in July he sent to the King letters
explanatory of the proceeding. Just prior to this,
in renewed fury of missionary zeal — a fury which
Father Olmedo, priest to the army, did his best
somewhat to restrain — he had thrown down the
idols at Cempoalla and cleansed the temples of
blood. His next acts were to scuttle and sink his
ships; to lash, mutilate, or hang, various Velasquez
conspirators; and to frighten away an expedition
sent out by the Governor of Jamaica. There now
remained, as the one sole objective of the Spaniards
in Mexico, Montezuma and his gold.

Montezuma is lord of many kings; his equal is not
known in all the world; in his house many lords serve
barefooted with eyes cast down to the ground; he has
thirty thousand vassals in his empire each of whom has
one hundred thousand fighting men; each year twenty
thousand persons are regularly sacrificed in his domin-
ions — some years fifty thousand. Montezuma dwells
in the most beautiful, the largest, and the strongest city
in the world — a city built in the water, possessing a
noble palace and plaza, one the center of an immense

114 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

the ground with fierceness and rage, and said
among the trumpets ‘ha! ha!’”

Having concluded an alliance with the Totonacs,
Cortes founded in June, 1519, in Bernal Harbor his
projected settlement, the town of Villa Rica de la
Vera Cruz; and in July he sent to the King letters
explanatory of the proceeding. Just prior to this,
in renewed fury of missionary zeal — a fury which
Father Olmedo, priest to the army, did his best
somewhat to restrain — he had thrown down the
idols at Cempoalla and cleansed the temples of
blood. His next acts were to scuttle and sink his
ships; to lash, mutilate, or hang, various Velasquez
conspirators; and to frighten away an expedition
sent out by the Governor of Jamaica. There now
remained, as the one sole objective of the Spaniards
in Mexico, Montezuma and his gold.

Montezuma is lord of many kings; his equal is not
known in all the world; in his house many lords serve
barefooted with eyes cast down to the ground; he has
thirty thousand vassals in his empire each of whom has
one hundred thousand fighting men; each year twenty
thousand persons are regularly sacrificed in his domin-
ions — • some years fifty thousand. Montezuma dwells
in the most beautiful, the largest, and the strongest city
in the world — a city built in the water, possessing a
noble palace and plaza, one the center of an immense

TO MEXICO*, 1519

CORTES’ M,

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I THE SPANISH CONQUEST

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CORTES AND MEXICO

115

traffic. Hither flock princes from all the earth bringing
incalculable riches. No lord however great is there who
does not pay tribute, and no one so poor is there who
does not give at least the blood of his arm. The cost ol
all is enormous, for, besides his household, Montezuma
is constantly waging war and maintaining vast armies.

These words of the cacique Olintetl echoed in the
ears of Cortes as, on August 31, 1519, he departed
from the friendly Totonac country on his way to
pay that visit to Montezuma which had been so
persistently declined. Had it been Columbus,
what more of confirmation would he have required
that he was about to behold the city and court of
the Great Kaan? As it was, even the practical-
minded Cortes felt himself impelled to write:
“According to our judgment, it is credible that
there is everything in this country which existed
in that from which Solomon is said to have brought
the gold for the Temple.”

Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Abode of the War God,
the “Place of the Stone and Prickly Pear,” seat of
the power of Montezuma, whereof the Spaniards
had heard under the name Ulua, was a wonderful
place to the Spaniard, but he failed to understand
its real significance. What the Spaniard found in

116 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Mexico, as he believed, was merely a “feudal mon-
archy” under a “king,” supported by a “nobil-
ity” occupying “palaces” in a picturesque “city”
full of “mosques.” In point of fact Cortes un-
wittingly was looking across an abyss of perhaps
ten thousand years — actually seeing the dead
past live again. “To say,” remarks John Fiske,
“ that it was like stepping back across the centuries
to visit the Nineveh of Sennacherib or hundred-
gated Thebes is but inadequately to depict the
situation, for it was a longer step than that.”
Yes, immeasurably longer, for it was a step from
civilization quite to mid-barbarism.

What it really was that Tenochtitlan disclosed
to the Spaniards may perhaps be best conceived
by the aid of a survey from the summit of one of
the so-called mosques.

The Central Valley of Mexico is a plateau some
7400 feet above sea-level, about 60 miles long by
40 broad, and surrounded by mountains. Here
the waters, collected by drainage as in a basin,
spread themselves out in three shallow lakes or
lagoons — of which Chaleo and Xochimilico are
fresh, and Tezcoco is salt — covering in all perhaps
442 square miles. Near the western side of Lake
Tezcoco are two marsh islands, and over them

CORTES AND MEXICO

117

extends the community of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
with its adjunct Tlatelolco. This community,
which is not at all a “city” or municipality, is of
about one-fourth the extent of the Mexico City of
the present day, and harbors at this early time a
population of perhaps 70,000 souls. Connection
with the mainland is maintained by three long
causeways — one to the north, one to the west,
and one to the south — each 20 or 25 feet broad,
and of a cement construction which is hard and
smooth. These causeways, provided as they are
with sluice gates, serve also as dikes for regulating
the flow and depth of the water to the west of
the islands, where it discharges from Chaleo and
Xochimilico, which are at a higher elevation than
Tezcoco. For similar control to the eastward of
the islands, a long dike exists. Besides the three
main causeways there are certain tributary ones
and a double aqueduct of concrete bringing water
from the mainland hill of Chapultepec.

Turning now our gaze more directly beneath, we
perceive first that the center of the main com-
munity, Tenochtitlan, is marked by a great square
900 by 1050 feet, facing the cardinal points and
surrounded by a stone wall eight or nine feet high,
embellished with carved stone serpents. In this

118 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

wall, on each side of the square, there is a gate, and
each gate is approached from without by a broad
avenue, those leading to the north, south, and west
gates being prolongations of the causeways. By
the square and avenues the main community is
divided into four quarters, the adjunct Tlatelolco
constituting a fifth division; and each quarter is
intersected by canals spanned by bridges. The
great square in Tenochtitlan forms the place of
trade and concourse, and in Tlatelolco a like square
subserves the same end.

So far as buildings are concerned, they are of
four principal sorts : first, huge communal dwellings ;
next, official edifices or tecpans ; then armories or
“houses of darts,” as they are called; and, last-
ly, temple structures comprehending educational
houses and quarters for priests. The material of
all is a reddish stone, for the most part whitened
to brilliance by stucco; and the foundations as a
rule are pyramidal in shape. The great square is
filled with temples — twenty, at least, without
counting the chief temple; and Tlatelolco also
has its temples, a chief and lesser ones.

If the hour of observation from our mosque be
sunset, the picture will be charming. In the “pale
blue water sheet of Tezcoco” will be reflected not

CORTES AND MEXICO

119

alone the white buildings of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
but those of other similar communities on the
shores, the whole relieved against a dark blue
sierra crowned by the peaks, gigantic and roseate,
of Yztaccihuatl, “White Woman,” and Popo-
catepetl, “Smoking Mountain.” On the other
hand, if we look at night, charm will be replaced
by an aspect weirdly sinister. Spectral barks or
canoes — fifty thousand of them, it is said — will
be darting athwart the lake and through the
brazier-lighted canals; while aloft the darkness will
everywhere be pierced by temple flames. A modern
smelting works, somewhat softened, might suggest
the effect.

Open daylight, however, will best reveal Mexico-
Tenochtitlan to the high-placed observer. By it
the communal dwellings will be seen to be of wide
extent, but of only one or at most two stories —
in the latter case receding or terraced — and
provided with low parapets. The principal tec-
pans, of which there are two — one being in
Tlatelolco — are surmounted by observation
towers, and the pyramids of the temples are
bulky structures of smooth stone, dented on one
or more sides by steps and culminating in wooden
oratories.

120

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Terrible, indeed, is the religion of the Aztec
Nahua! Its leading deity is Huitzilopochtli, god of
war, and to him chiefly is consecrated the greatest
pyramid of all. It stands in the broad square of
Tenochtitlan; it is three hundred feet wide on each
side at the base, and with its oratories it rises to a
height of one hundred and fifty feet. Here, under
one’s very nostrils, as one gazes, reeks the blood of
human sacrifices — blood-offerings performed by
filthy priests, who, in the curt phrase of Bernal
Diaz, “stink like sulphur and have another bad
smell like carrion.”

A second great deity shares with the war god
his ensanguined abode — Tezcatlipoca, god-of-the-
breath-of-life, the racial god of the Nahua. Near
by are the temples of two other important gods:
Tlaloc, god of rain and fertility; and Quetzalcoatl,
counterpart of the Maya Kukulcan, god of order,
enlightenment, and humaneness, the blond and
bearded god, the “Fair God” of romance.

But it is not merely the exteriors of houses that
daylight in Tenochtitlan best reveals. Interiors
respond to it even more. Here will be seen courts
supplied with ponds and fountains, the abode in
some instances of wild beasts and birds; chambers,
with floors and walls brought to a hard finish by

CORTES AND MEXICO

121

cement and gypsum, and decked with featherwork
hangings, mats, and cushions, and provided with
low-canopied beds, low tables and stools, flint and
copper implements, and a varied pottery. Be-
tween many of the buildings, too, are green garden
plots; and in the lake floating vegetable gardens;
and in the squares, both of Tenochtitlan and Tlate-
lolco, huge markets in full tide of activity.

Of much interest is all this, but obviously in-
terest of a limited sort. What of the inner self of
the Aztec? What of his soul? As disclosed by his
religion, the soul of the Aztec is dark: war feeds
it and blood anoints it. But art is a second me-
dium of soul disclosure, and through it the soul of
the Aztec is revealed as not inhospitable to light
and beauty. Of Aztec art, featherwork is the most
striking example; but metal work, flower culture,
and poetry are also striking examples — especially
flower culture and poetry. Cempoalla is a place of
roses. Mexico-Tenochtitlan is even more such a
place. Roses peep above the parapets of the com-
munal dwellings and tecpans, bloom in the chinam-
pas or floating gardens, depend in garlands from
the breasts of idols. No occasion is there that
roses do not grace, be it festival, baptism, wedding,
or funeral; and though the form of arrangement be

122

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

oft that of the pyramid or the sacrificial mound,
beauty veils the tragedy of the suggestion.

When, therefore, the Aztec poet dreams and
sings, it is flowers — roses for the most part —
and other things of a flower-like fragility that he
celebrates: humming-birds, butterflies, song-birds,
and precious stones. “I wonder where I may
gather some pretty sweet flowers. Whom shall I
ask? Suppose that I ask the brilliant humming-
bird . . . suppose that I ask the yellow butterfly.
They will tell me.” “I polished my noble new
song like a shining emerald. I arranged it like
the voice of the Tzinitzcan bird. ... I set it in
order like the chant of the Zacuan bird. I mingled
it with the beauty of the emerald, that I might
make it appear like a rose bursting its bud.”
“They led me within a valley to a fertile spot, a
flowery spot where the dew spread out in glittering
splendor, where I saw lovely fragrant flowers,
lovely odorous flowers, clothed with the dew.”
But even amid songs of rejoicing rarely is there
wanting the minor chord, the plaintive strain com-
mon to primitive man. “Weeping, I the singer,
weave my songs of flowers of sadness.” “I lift my
voice in wailing, I am afflicted as I remember that
we must leave the beautiful flowers, the noble

CORTES AND MEXICO

123

songs.” “Only sad flowers and songs are here in
Mexico, in Tlatelolco, Ohuaya! Ohuaya!”

The Spaniard beholding Mexico-Tenochtitlan,
with its adjunct Tlatelolco, failed to comprehend
it, and his failure, save lately and in the case of a
few persons, has been our own. The Mexico City
or municipality of the Spaniard was, in fact, an
Indian pueblo. It had been founded in 1325 by
southward roving Indians, the Aztecs, a tribe few
in number and near starvation. Finding the rich
Mexican valley already occupied, the Aztecs took
as their portion the two neighboring islands in Lake
Tezcoco, and devoted themselves to their principal
need, the production of food, chiefly maize and
cacao. The tribe in process of time became fierce,
bloody, and prosperous; and it was the struggle for
food that made them so. «

This struggle for subsistence, indeed, is the key
to Aztec life and institutions. To this struggle
was it due that the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan
planted gardens and invented the floating garden.
To this was it due primarily that, feeling the need
of controlling communication with the mainland,
they built causeways which might be utilized as
dikes. To this was it due that, feeling the need of a
water supply and of an increased amount of food,

124 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

they mustered courage and conquered portions of
the mainland nearest to them. To this was it due
that, growing in population and power and needing
yet more food, they forced into existence a tripar-
tite confederacy to levy contribution over an
ever-widening area. To this was it due that, dis-
covering the value of terror as a means of rule,
they developed the ancient Maya-Nahua cult of
human sacrifice — at first practised infrequently —
into proportions at once colossal and revolting, and
made Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, their local
deity in chief.

The Aztec tribe as an organism in embryo had
but one head — a sachem or cacique, a civil leader.
In him, seemingly, were combined dual elements —
the Above or Masculine element, and the Below or
Feminine. With expansion and conflict came a
need of differentiation of attributes, and there
arose the war leader or Chief-of-Men. The dis-
tinctively Masculine element was now embodied
in him; the Feminine being reserved to his asso-
ciate, who henceforth bore the title — to many so
puzzling — of “Snake Woman.” In the days of
the Spanish Conquest the Snake Woman, though
often alluded to, makes no particular figure. The
three overshadowing figures are Chief s-of -Men —

CORTES AND MEXICO

125

Montezuma, Cuitlahuatzin, and Quauhtemotzin.
Of these Montezuma is reflective and weak; the
other two, his successors, decisive and strong.

Just here, however, our account of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan must cease, for at the South Cause-
way, bowing, stands Cortes. He has come with
some four hundred men, fifteen horses, and seven
light guns. The route by which he traveled from
the 31st of August to the 15th of October has been
from Xocotlan southwest to Tlascala, a community
independent of Montezuma yet distrustful of the
Spaniard; and from Tlascala southwest to Cholula.
From Cholula, in the valley or plain of Huitzilipan,
the invaders have marched west to the moun-
tain ridge connecting Popocatepetl with its mate,
Yztaccihuatl, and from here, early in November,
have surveyed the basin-like valley of Mexico,
with Mexico-Tenochtitlan afar off amid the waters
of Lake Tezcoco. They have then approached the
border of Lake Chaleo, traversed a causeway lead-
ing to a peninsula, Itztapalapan, and now, in the
community of Itztapalapan itself, stand dazed
before the “stone work,” the “woodwork of cedar
and other sweet scented trees,” the “orchard and
garden full of roses and fruit trees, ” and the “pond

126

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of fresh water with birds of many kinds and
breeds.” To Bernal Diaz and his followers,
touched with the spirit of Spanish romanticism,
the scene appears as the “enchantments of the
legend of Amadis.”

In the mind of Montezuma, meanwhile, the
grave question has been: Can these Spaniards,
these strangers of the sunrise, be gods?

When Grijalva’s expedition appeared off the
coast in 1518, it had been reported to Tenochtitlan
that in the “waters of heaven,” as the open sea
was called, “floating towers” had appeared, from
which had descended beings with white faces and
hands, with beards and long hair, and wearing
raiment of brilliant colors and “round head-
coverings.” Could these beings be priests or
heralds of the Fair God Quetzalcoatl, come, accord-
ing to the Maya-Nahua tradition, to resume sway
over his people? Before proof could be adduced,
Grijalva had departed; and then, shortly, had
come swift messengers with news of Cortes and
with pictures of his “floating towers” and of his
fair-visaged yet bearded attendants, handling the
thunder and bestriding fierce creatures that
spurned the ground.

Proof regarding the quality of the fair strangers

CORTES AND MEXICO

127

was required now more than ever, and so the first
embassy had been sent to Cortes — the embassy
that had carried back, as a specimen of the round
head-coverings of the strangers, the gilt helmet.
This contrivance, as it chanced, resembled the
head-coverings of the Aztec gods, and especially
of Huitzilopochtli, god of war. So there had been
sent to Cortes the second embassy, bringing the
head-dresses of quetzal feathers. Now these head-
dresses were those of the four principal gods of
the Aztecs: Tezcatlipoca, god-of-the-breath-of-life;
Huitzilopochtli, god of war; Tlaloc, god of fer-
tility; and Quetzalcoatl, the fair or culture god.
What they seemingly were meant to signify to
Cortes was that Montezuma, tentatively at any
rate, was willing to acknowledge the former as,
like himself, entitled to wear them as a representa-
tive of the gods.

Nor was this all that the wonderful gifts of the
second embassy were meant to signify. Among the
gifts, as will be remembered, were two great wheels
— one of gold, and one of silver. All Indians of
America possess a social system more or less fully
worked out from the heavenly spaces — the Four
Quarters or cardinal points of direction, and the
three regions — Above, Below, and Center. The

128 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

four head-dresses, symbolizing the four principal
gods, may therefore be conceived as meant to
stand to Cortes for the Four Quarters; and the gold
and silver wheels, respectively, for the Above and
the Below. Something of this kind almost cer-
tainly was symbolized by the gifts which, besides
being in the nature of a bribe to the Spaniard, as a
human being, to depart, were likewise in the nature
of a propitiatory offering to him, as a god or at
least a high priest, to be merciful.

Whether or not the Spaniards really possessed
preternatural attributes, it had vastly puzzled all
Mexico to decide. The Cempoallans had indus-
triously spread the idea that they did; and one
thing only had served to detract from the claim.
At Tlascala, where the matter had been put to a
test, some of the Spanish horses, those creatures
of terror, had been killed, hacked apart, and trium-
phantly devoured at feasts. At Cholula, however,
Cortes by the cleverness of Marina had with un-
erring precision alighted upon an Aztec plot to
destroy him — had, as the marveling Cholulans ex-
pressed it, “read their very minds and thoughts”;
and such power could pertain to gods alone.

But to come back to the Spanish leader as he
stands, bowing, at the South Causeway outside of

CORTES AND MEXICO 129

Itztapalapan. Whether he be divine or human, it
has become apparent that his entry into Tenoch-
titlan can no longer be prevented by gifts nor
thwarted by guile. Montezuma, therefore, making
a virtue of necessity, is about to come forth to
greet him. Not that machinations have ceased
at all. Once the Spaniards are beyond the draw-
bridges with retreat cut off, once securely lodged
in one of the principal tecyans, it is the purpose of
the Chief-of-Men, counseled thereto by the dire
Huitzilopochtli himself, to destroy the invaders
utterly and to send them in batches to the great
pyramid as a savory and acceptable blood-offering.

The point where the ceremonies incident to the
meeting of Montezuma with Cortes are to take
place is on the South Causeway at Acachinanco,
a causeway junction, and here a great crowd is
gathered. It would seem that not alone is Tenoch-
titlan a settlement of four divisions, but that Aztec
territory as such, outside of Tenochtitlan, partakes
of the same plan; for at the causeway junction
Cortes is received by four Aztec subchiefs from
Tezcoco, Itztapalapan, Tacuba, and Coyohua-
can, settlements on the lake shore to the north-
east, southeast, northwest, and southwest, respec-
tively, of Tenochtitlan. The lake is crowded with

130 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

observers in canoes, but the causeway itself, the
present Calzada de Iztapalapan, is kept clear, and
down the vista which it forms rises Mexico, full of
mystery.

The four subchiefs conduct the Spaniards to
the point where the South Causeway merges in the
South Avenue, the present street El Rastro, lead-
ing to the great square, and here Montezuma
appears in person. He comes reclining in a sump-
tuous litter borne upon the shoulders of attendants.
At sight of Cortes he descends, and there is spread
above him a baldaquin of light greenish-blue
feathers with fringe of gold, pearls, and jade. He
is a man about fifty-two years old, tall, slender,
and of dignified mien, and his hair is worn short
over the ears. His garb is a robe of radiant blue
and gold, and his feet are shod with golden sandals.
Is it as priest of Huitzilopochtli that he thus
presents himself to Cortes, the possible representa-
tive of that other deity, the Fair God Quetzal-
coatl, waiting to dispossess him? Be that as it
may, the four subchiefs, habited likewise in
heavenly blue, advance to his support. Digni-
taries bearing tripartite wands, symbolizing the
authority of the Confederacy, go before him, while
attendants sweep clean the highway, and even

CORTES AND MEXICO 131

lay carpets that the golden sandals may not touch
the ground.

As Montezuma draws near, Cortes dismounts
from his horse and steps forward. Montezuma
kisses the earth — an act performed by pressing
it with the hand and then carrying the hand to the
lips — and offers to Cortes — how much of Mexico
is here! — a bunch of roses. The Spanish leader
moves to salute Montezuma by an embrace, but is
restrained by a gesture and instead places about
his neck a necklace of beads taken from his own
person. Throughout the ceremony the sides of the
avenue are lined with attending sages, all of whom
are barefoot, and to none of whom is it permitted
to raise the eyes to Montezuma — the man of
great medicine, the high priest.

When the Spaniards entered Mexico it was
November 8, 1519. Between this date and the
beginning of 1520, Cortes and his men found
lodgings in the halls and chambers of the tecpan ,
the official house or council /lodge in the great
square, near the great temple, formerly the quar-
ters of Montezuma himself, but now vacated to
accommodate the Spaniards; Montezuma having
taken up new quarters in one of the vast communal
dwellings. Here Cortes made himself secure by

132 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

placing cannon to command the approaches, and
nere he was received in audience by Montezuma,
who, causing him to be seated on “a very rich
platform,” in a chamber “facing a court” em-
bellished with fountains and flowers, addressed
him thus: “We believe that our race was brought
to these parts by a lord, whose vassals they all were,
and who returned to his native country. . . .
And we have always believed that his descendants
would come to subjugate this country and us, as
his vassals; and according to the direction from
which you say you come, which is where the sun
rises, and from what you tell us of your great lord,
or king, who has sent you here, we believe and
hold for certain that he is our rightful sovereign.”

Early fruits of the occupation of the tecpan by
Cortes were the discovery by accident of the walled-
up storeroom containing the official treasure of the
Aztec Government — that Aladdin’s cave whence
had come the gold and silver wheels; the burning
alive of certain Aztec plotters; and the seizure of
the person of the Chief-of-Men, who, transferred
to the tecpan, became, under Castilian tutelage,
the tool and mouthpiece of his captor.

During 1520 complications for the invaders
arose. Cortes contrived the seizure of the war

CORTES AND MEXICO 133

chiefs of Tezcoco and Tlacopan, sub-heads of the
Aztec tripartite confederacy, and of the war chiefs
of Coyohuacan and Itztapalapan, two of the four
sub-heads of the Aztec district itself. Then, fur-
ther, he forbade human sacrifices. By both these
acts he stored up trouble for himself. Trouble,
furthermore, developed independently from with-
out. Diego Velasquez, Governor of Cuba and
Adelantado of the lands over which Cortes was
exercising sway, had at length organized a strong
expedition under Panfilo de Narvaez, a man of
“hollow” voice, to assert his authority. Narvaez
reached San Juan de Ulua in April, and secretly
got into relations with Montezuma. In order to
check him, Cortes was compelled to divide his own
small command. Leaving one hundred and forty
men under Pedro de Alvarado in Tenochtitlan, he
marched forth with ninety-two men in May, and
before the end of the month had, near Cempoalla,
met his foe, defeated him, and made him prisoner.
Meanwhile in Tenochtitlan, Alvarado, impetuous
by nature and roused by tales of conspiracy among
the Aztecs fostered by the coming of Narvaez, set
upon the population while engaged in celebrating
the festival of the god Tezcatlipoca and slaughtered
them without discrimination and without ruth.

134 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Stunned by the onslaught but rallying promptly,
the Mexicans fiercely assaulted the tecpan where
the Spaniards were housed, and held them in a
state of siege till Cortes, informed of their plight
by secret messengers, was able to return to their
relief. Food was running short, and Montezuma,
being appealed to, induced Cortes to liberate the
war chief of Itztapalapan, Cuitlahuatzin by name,
that he might calm the people and procure it.
This was the beginning of the end of the official
character of Montezuma. Cuitlahuatzin was hence-
forth recognized by the clans as Chief-of-Men, and
led the Mexicans in desperate attempts to force the
Spaniards out of Tenochtitlan.

It was now late June and departure from the
lake settlement became imperative for Cortes. In
vain did the Spaniards in a hand-to-hand strug-
gle drive the Aztecs from the dizzy summit of the
pyramid in the great square. In vain did Mon-
tezuma appeal to his countrymen from the roof
of the tecpan. The Chief-of-Men, no longer such,
was reviled to his face; nay more, was assailed
by missiles and stricken in the forehead. Within
three days he was dead, and on the fourth at mid-
night his erstwhile jailers stole silently from the
tecpan into the avenue leading west to the Tacuba

CORTES AND MEXICO 135

Causeway — shortest of the three routes to the
mainland and interrupted by the fewest sluice-
ways. At first undetected, they had nearly gained
the causeway-head, when the night silence re-
echoed to a cry — the shriek of a native woman.
A signal drum on the pyramid in Tlatelolco at
once boomed forth a warning, and secrecy was at
an end. It was the noche triste — the “doleful
night.” The bridges over the sluiceways were gone
and could not be quickly replaced. Men, horses,
and booty, smitten in rear and flank, filled the
chasms in a tangled mass. Cortes himself got
over by the greatest difficulty. Alvarado, it is said,
cleared one of the chasms by an unparalleled vault-
ing leap. Velasquez de Leon and Francisco de
Morla fell, to emerge no more. Of the total force
of Spaniards — 1250 men since the capture of Nar-
vaez — some 450 were missing.

Twenty-four horses survived the catastrophe,
but the significance of this fact was now small.
Neither white stranger nor horse was any longer
preternatural. Both were proven mortal; both
could perish. Cortes, after all, was not the Fair
God Quetzalcoatl — was not even his priest. He
was not divine in any sense — just human, just
lustful — a dissembling conqueror of flesh and

136 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

blood. Once on the mainland, the Spaniards
were able to stay somewhat the Aztec pursuit;
and though, as Cortes expressed it, “without a
horse that could run, or a horseman who could
lift an arm, or a foot soldier who could move,”
he finally managed to round Lake Tezcoco on
the north, and so, after a fierce melee at Otumba
on the 7th of July, to reach friendly and shelter-
ing Tlascala. Among the saved, besides Alvarado,
were Gonzalo de Sandoval, Cristobal de Olid, and
the indispensable Marina and Aguilar.

The capture of Tenochtitlan and the reduction
of the Aztecs to submission were still as much as
ever the objects of Cortes, and he resumed the
task sturdily in spite of his temporary check. His
forces he rested and augmented. Surrounding
peoples he coerced or conciliated. The road to
Vera Cruz he put under guard. Disaffection in
his own ranks, due to the presence of so many
of Narvaez’s men, he quieted by “soothing elo-
quence.” At length, on the 28th of December,
all was ready. Tezcoco was occupied, and thirteen
vessels — shallow barges which, after the manner
of Balboa in Darien, had been constructed in the
forest — were carried in pieces across the moun-
tains and launched on Tezcoco Lake. Between

CORTES AND MEXICO

137

March and May, 1521, the Spaniards seized Itzta-
palapan and other points; and, during May and
June, Cortes, with nine hundred Spaniards and
thousands of native allies, eighty-six horses, and
eighteen guns, began a systematic siege of Tenoch-
titlan by land and water. Many were the ad-
vances and repulses. The Aztecs resisted not alone
with determination but with the utmost fury.
They cut the great dike; they converted every
canal into a moat; they made of every house a
castle. Taunts and challenges no less than missiles
they flung across the water and down the converg-
ing avenues. By night captive Spaniards, goaded
to the top of the Tlatelolco Pyramid, were spec-
tacularly slaughtered in the glow of sacrificial fires.

Spanish valor did much toward the reduction of
the great community of the lake, but famine and
wholesale demolition of buildings did more, and
on the 13th of August the Chief-of-Men, Quauhte-
motzin, dought}^ successor to Cuitlahuatzin — who
had died of smallpox before the siege — surren-
dered in despair his own person and what remained
of his nation.

So fell Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Fortunate was it
for Cortes that in 1519 it was Montezuma who held
in Mexico the position of Chief-of-Men! Had it

138

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

been otherwise — had this position been held by
Cuitlahuatzin or Quauhtemotzin — it may be
doubted whether the Sun myth of the Fair God
and his impending return would have been per-
mitted to paralyze action. In a sense far from
fanciful, Montezuma, “sicklied o’er with the pale
cast of thought, ” was the Hamlet of the Aztecs.

CHAPTER V

SPANISH CONQUERORS IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold.

Hood : Miss Kilmansegg.

Balboa had fallen before Pedrarias, but the search
for some passageway to the provinces and islands
of the South Sea, rich in spices, pearls, and gold,
was continued by not unworthy successors in the
persons of Andres Nino — a sea-dog not to be
confounded with Pero Alonso Nino, pilot under
Columbus and Ojeda — and Gil Gonzalez Davila.
Columbus himself had sought this passageway
or strait, between 1502 and 1504, and others had
followed him. This Nino, too, had explored the
coast of Darien in behalf of Balboa. In 1519, the
year of Balboa’s death, Nino entered into a part-
nership with Gil Gonzalez, treasury agent for Es-
panola, a man of great practicality and excellent
judgment. The partners were empowered by the

Crown to take over the ships built by Balboa and

139

140

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

to make exploration one thousand leagues to
the west. Pedrarias — seventy years old, drier,
harder, more inflexible than ever — refused to de-
liver the vessels. Gonzalez, whose rank in the
partnership was that of Captain-General, there-
upon dismantled his own ships, and, repeating
the feat of Balboa, carried the materials over the
mountains to the river Balsas. In the end, after
delays and discouragements comparable to those
of Balboa, he managed to build and equip four
small vessels and with them to sail westward on
January 21, 1522.

This expedition, which took a double form — a
coasting voyage by Nino and a march overland
by Gonzalez — came first to the lands of the ca-
cique Nicoya, from whom Gonzalez learned that
fifty leagues to the northward there dwelt a greater
cacique whose name was Nicaragua. Gonzalez
abhorred strife as much as Pedrarias delighted in it,
and the naive wisdom of Nicaragua had therefore
a chance to unfold itself unhindered. Whence,
asked the cacique, after listening to a detailed
account of the Mosaic scheme of creation, did
the sun and moon obtain their light and how
would they lose it? Why did not the God of the
Christians make a better physical world, one more

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 141

comfortable to dwell in? And finally, speaking in
the ear of the interpreter, he asked: “Came these
men from the sky?” Being assured that they did,
his next query was: “But how? Came they di-
rectly down like a spent arrow, or riding a cloud,
or in a circuit like a bent bow?”

The Indian community over which Nicaragua
ruled was situated on a large freshwater sea, the
present Lake Nicaragua, and, striding into it,
Gonzalez drank of the water and took possession
in the name of the King of Spain. “It is by situa-
tion,” he wrote, “barely three leagues from the
South Sea, and, according to the pilots, connected
with the North Sea. If so, it is a great discovery.”
Here Gonzalez repelled an Indian attack under a
picturesque cacique named Diriangen, and, having
satisfied himself that as yet the Spaniards of
Mexico, Cortes and his followers, had made no
southerly advance, returned to Panama. As for
Andres Nino, he had coasted as far northwest-
ward as the Bay of Fonseca on the shores of the
later Central American provinces of Salvador
and Honduras.

But what meanwhile of the doings of Pedrarias?
It was in January, 1519, that Balboa had been got

142 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

rid of, and by the 15th of August Pedrarias and
Espinosa — Gaspar de Espinosa, now Captain-
General of the South Sea — had crossed the Isth-
mus from Acla and had founded Panama to serve
as a southern terminal for the long contemplated
chain of posts to connect the Atlantic with the
Pacific side of the Isthmus until the ardently
desired interoceanic strait should be discovered.
Later the same year a northern terminal was pro-
vided through the founding of Nombre de Dios.

With the rise of Panama, now created by royal
decree a city and the capital of Darien, Santa
Maria la Antigua, forever ill-famed as the place of
execution of Balboa, sank rapidly to decay and
in September, 1524, was burned by the Indians.
Henceforth, in the old Tierra Firme, Panama
and Nombre de Dios are the names wherewith
to conjure. About these cities, more than about
any others of the Indies, does romance cling. A
wide road, says Peter Martyr, was built from one
to the other “through mountains overgrown with
thick woods never touched from all eternity,” to
the intent that “two carts side by side might pass
over with ease to search ye secrets of either spa-
cious Sea.” And “ye secrets” were “searched”
well, for at Panama, by the middle of the century,

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 143

not only did there ride at anchor “ships from the
South and far western East, laden with the wealth
of half a world,” but “in the sun-beaten streets
gold and silver lay stacked in bricks,” waiting,
“along with spices and precious merchandise,”
transportation to Nombre de Dios.

Pedrarias had made headway also both to the
west and east of his new capital. To the west, as
far as the nation of the Chiriqui, famed as potters,
he had sent Espinosa and Francisco Pizarro, the
latter dutiful as ever. To the south he had like-
wise sent a faithful retainer and honest man, Pas-
cual de Andagoya, who, following the Isthmus of
Darien to where it broadens into the continent
of South America (Mundus Novus), became the
explorer of Biru, whence very possibly the name
Piru, and ultimately that of Peru. At any rate,
out of the Andagoya expedition grew, as we shall
see, the subsequent and ever memorable enterprise
of Pizarro.

Pedrarias’s next step was to send Hernandez de
Cordoba to forestall Gonzalez in the occupation
of Nicaragua, a country claimed by him as within
the confines of Darien.

Gonzalez appeared at Panama just when Pe-
drarias was prepared to appropriate his conquests,

144 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

and so Balboa-like had fairly thrust his head be-
tween the jaws of the lion; but he was quick enough
to withdraw it, for he spread sail from Nombre de
Dios as Pedrarias rode up in hot haste to intercept
him. When Gonzalez returned, he approached
Nicaragua from the Honduras coast. He thus
avoided Pedrarias himself but encountered instead
Hernando de Soto, lieutenant to Cordoba. Gon-
zalez defeated Cordoba, but only to succumb to
the superior force of Francisco de las Casas, one
of Cortes’s lieutenants, who carried him to Mexico
as a prisoner.

Cordoba meantime, thinking the occasion oppor-
tune, sought to set up an independent government
in Nicaragua and Honduras. This act of treachery
to Pedrarias was reported to him at Panama by
De Soto, and in January, 1526, Pedrarias set sail
for Nicaragua in person. With characteristic
energy and ruthlessness, he arrested Cordoba, put
him to death, and took control of the province.
The death of Cordoba may be regarded as marking
the end of the long-standing duel between Pedra-
rias and the successors of Balboa, and its conclu-
sion was not unfavorable to the “ swarthy-souled ”
Governor.

Upon Pedrarias — cunning, indomitable, vin-

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 145

dictive — Fortune seemed ever to smile. When,
for example, in May, 1520, Lope de Sosa came to
Antigua to supersede him in office, that unhappy
man was mortally stricken in the cabin of his ship
as he prepared to disembark for his inauguration.
Again, when in 1526 the Governor was recalled
posthaste to Panama for trial, just as he was on
the point of seizing from Cortes himself Hondu-
ras as part of Nicaragua, what should befall but,
though superseded as to Darien by Pedro de los
Rios, his authority over Nicaragua was confirmed!
But the fact is not to be overlooked that he
was ably and zealously seconded at Court by
his wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, whom he had season-
ably dispatched to Spain with his pearls and gold.

The last years of his life, despite the fact that
they were the years of an octogenarian, were active
and marked by bloodshed. On the caciques of
the country who rose in revolt, he wreaked dia-
bolical vengeance by his bloodhounds. But he
had withal an eye for trade and transportation.
He projected a transcontinental route between
Lake Nicaragua and the present Grey town, and
afterwards one between Leon and the north coast
by way of Salvador. He became interested in the
expedition of Pizarro to Peru, but in this matter

10

146 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

he for once suffered bafflement, and died at Leon,
in 1530, as he was nearing his ninetieth year.

If the adventure of Gil Gonzalez to Lake Nic-
aragua, in 1522-23, was prompted by fear of
southward encroachment by Cortes, Cortes him-
self was not blind to the chance of northward
encroachment by the Spaniards of the Isthmus.
In other words, the conqueror of Mexico and
founder of New Spain sought success also to
the south, and for two reasons. There lay the
districts of Guatemala and Honduras — districts
which, it was said, must “far exceed Mexico in
riches, while equaling her in the size of towns, in
the number of inhabitants, and in culture.” And
there, in Castilian fancy, figured that long-sought
interoceanic strait upon which every one counted
to reach the vast Pacific with its isles of mystery
and gold.

If the Spaniards had but known it, Guatemala
held things more wonderful than gold or spices or
even “soft sensuous pearls,” for it had been the
seat and center of early Maya culture centuries
before, and within its limits, or just beyond, lay
the amazing ruins of Tikal, Naranjo, Palenque,
and Copan. But for the sixteenth century Span-

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 147

iard archeology did not exist. His quest was still
the same as that of Columbus and Behaim, one
still inspired by the lure of treasure.

To make the conquest of Guatemala, Cortes
chose Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado, of Badajos,
whom we have already met, was of good figure
and engaging countenance. He was athletic, too,
and an excellent horseman, and his hair and beard
were red — so red that the Indians were tempted
to think him Quetzalcoatl, the Fair God, and
christened him the Sun. But though in a sense a
good comrade, Alvarado was easily roused to anger
and to brutal vengeance. He left Mexico City for
Guatemala on December 6, 1523, with one hun-
dred and twenty horsemen, three hundred foot-sol-
diers, a few pieces of artillery, and a large bodj of
Mexicans. The principal Guatemalan tribes were
in certain respects superior to the Aztecs and
comparable to the Peruvians. Of their chief
settlements, Utatlan was most celebrated. Mas-
sive official buildings, religious and governmental,
grouped about a court made it rudely magnificent.
The subjugation of these people took the better
part of two years. During this time Alvarado
passed also into Salvador. Here, contrary to his
expectation, he failed to get news of an interoceanic

148 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

strait to the southward but heard of distant cities,
built of stone and lime and densely populated —
an echo, no doubt, of Quito and Cuzco.

Some months later, Alvarado was met by news
of a startling character. Cortes, it was declared,
had died, not in Mexico but on the way to Hon-
duras, whither he was conducting an expedition.
If so, who would be his successor? It might well
be Alvarado; and the conquistador at once made
ready to repair to the seat of government in New
Spain. Cortes was soon discovered to be far from
dead, however, for toward the close of 1525 Al-
varado received orders from him to repair straight-
way to Honduras with all his forces. Vehemently
declaring that all he possessed he owed to Hernan
Cortes, and that with him he would die, Alvarado
obeyed. But he learned on crossing the border
that his master had changed his plans and had
returned by sea to Vera Cruz, whereupon, in the
midsummer of 1526, Alvarado retraced his own
steps to Santiago, of which he had been a founder.
But his venturesome spirit would not let him rest
content with his single conquest. Comprehensive
ideas had gripped him. He felt the imperious lure
of golden dreams. He would go back to Mexico
after all. He would see Cortes, secure his support,

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 149

and sail for Spain. There he would win sanction
to adventure where the South beckoned. He
would be the man to complete the work of Balboa.

But what of the expedition of Cortes into Hon-
duras? Originally it had not been Cortes’s in-
tention to make this expedition in person. He
had chosen for the task Cristobal de Olid, a friend
of Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, a “strong
limbed” man and “a very Hector in fight.” But
although Olid sailed from Vera Cruz to Honduras,
he had on the way, at Habana, gone back to his
allegiance to Velasquez. It had thereupon become
necessary to send after the recreant a sleuth in
the person of Francisco de las Casas. At Triunfo
de la Cruz, just south of Columbus’s island of
Guanaja, Olid had captured Las Casas and
also Las Casas’s prisoner, Gil Gonzalez, but had
afterwards been mortally stabbed by his captives
as he sat with them at meat.

Cortes had been unfaithful to Velasquez; Olid
had been unfaithful to Cortes; would Las Casas
be any more faithful than Olid had been? Such,
in the mind of the Conqueror of Mexico, was now
the question. “Villain whom I have reared and
trusted,” Cortes had exclaimed on hearing of the
treachery of Olid, “by God and St. Peter he shall

150 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

rue it!” As for Las Casas, it were well, perhaps,
that he even have not too much the temptation of
opportunity. So, late in October, 1524, Cortes
set forth for the district of Tabasco, where he
planned to cross the peninsula of Yucatan, then
thought to be an island, to the northern coast of
Honduras. He took a force of about one hundred
horsemen and forty foot-soldiers, together with
pages, musicians, jugglers, servants, and some
three thousand Indians. A unique feature was a
body of Aztec war chiefs and caciques from about
Lake Tezcoco, including Quauhtemotzin, deposed
Chief-of-Men of Tenochtitlan. These it had not
been deemed prudent to leave in Mexico in the
absence of the Conqueror.

At Teotilac, a point between Iztapan and Lake
Peten, Cortes became convinced that the deposed
chiefs and caciques in his train were plotting to
overthrow him and to restore in Mexico the Aztec
regime, and he hanged two of them, Quauhtemot-
zin and the war chief of Tlacopan, to a ceiba
tree at midnight. Thus was tragedy invoked. But
comedy did not range far behind. On an island
in Lake Peten was a fairly large Indian settle-
ment where Cortes left a badly lamed horse. The
Indians, filled with veneration for the strange

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 151

creature, fed it on flowers and birds, of which diet
it speedily died. They then worshiped it in effigy
in one of their temples as a god of thunder and
lightning, a practice which was still maintained
in 1614.

The march to the southeast, begun after the
Spanish mode with music and dancing, quickly
became a thing of dolor. Rivers, forest-clad mo-
rasses, lakes, and labyrinthine sloughs seemed
everywhere; and when these at length ceased,
there supervened a flinty mountain pass which
cost the lives of men and of scores of horses. To
the south lay the ruins of Palenque, but they
awakened no interest, and it was five weary months
before the exhausted band reached Golfo Dulce
and the Spanish town of Nito.

At Trujillo, where Cortes was planning yet
further conquests, disturbing news overtook him.
Quarrels had broken out among members of the
administrative board to which he had left the
government, and upon rumor of his death his
property had been seized. His presence was sorely
needed to save his fortune and his conquests.
Resolving to return, he set out on April 25, 1526,
and reached Vera Cruz late in May, so emaciated
and broken in body as to be but a specter of his

152 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

former self. In Mexico City — now a “city” in
the true sense of the term — Cortes was welcomed
with demonstrations of delight by Spaniards and
Indians alike. He was still to all beholders the
Spanish conquistador par excellence.

Like Columbus, Cortes was an object of much
envy on both sides of the Atlantic, and to make
clear his doings to the Spanish King he took ship
in 1528 for Spain. He debarked at Palos, where
he is said to have met Pizarro; and in his train,
by a freak of fate, was Pizarro’s future Brutus,
Juan de Rada. Charles Y was at this time holding
Court at Toledo, and here Cortes was met and
escorted into his monarch’s presence by a brilliant
group of nobles. Needless to say, he did not come
empty handed. Indeed, by comparison with what
he brought, the offerings of Columbus to Ferdi-
nand and Isabella seem mean and trivial. First,
there was heaped treasure of gold and silver; then
featherwork and embroidery; then specimens of
arms and implements; strange plants and animals
and beautiful birds. Imposing Indian chiefs, among
them a son of Montezuma, graced his retinue,
while amusement was contributed to the occasion
by dwarfs, albinos, and human monstrosities. Cor-
tes, like Columbus, would have knelt at the royal

SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 153

feet, but Charles, like Ferdinand and Isabella, raised
up the suppliant and compelled him to speak sitting;
and, when illness overtook him, the King personally
visited him in his lodgings.

In Spain the conqueror of Mexico contracted a
brilliant marriage. Catalina, his first wife, had
already died, and Marina, his Indian mistress, he
had given as wife to one of his soldiers. He re-
ceived the title of Marques del Valle de Oaxaca
(Marquis of the Valley) and was made a Knight
of Santiago. But amid these marks of royal favor
misfortunes were not wanting. His father had
died, and so had his beloved follower, the youthful
Gonzalo de Sandoval. Capping all, he failed of
his ambition to be made a duke, a glory which
he coveted beyond any other.

CHAPTER VI

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS
He that has partners has masters. — Pope Sixtu * V.

In the same year in which Cortes started for Hon-
duras, Francisco Pizarro set out for the Biru
country of Andagoya. Under Balboa, on the
shores of the Gulf of San Miguel, he had heard of
Biru as the gateway to a country far to the south
where the people were rich and used ships and
beasts of burden; and later, under Morales, he had
paid in this quarter a hasty and bloody visit.
Pizarro, native of Trujillo in Estremadura, — tall,
shapely, sedate — was at this time about fifty-
three years old. He undoubtedly was ambitious
but he certainly was not inspired. His strength
lay not in initiative but in dogged persistence and
endurance. His conquest of Peru was in certain
respects heroic, but it was not original. His plans,
so to speak, were borrowed ready finished from
Cortes.

154

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

155

Pizarro had three coadjutors or partners : Diego
de Almagro, an old friend and fellow rancher in the
Isthmus; Fernando de Luque, vicar of Panama;
and Pedrarias Davila, the Governor. To the re-
quirements of military command Pizarro was
equal; but Almagro was needed to superintend
the dispatch of supplies, and Luque to play softly
the part of intercessor with Pedrarias. None of the
triumvirate was young in years; but none had
as yet won a fortune, and, as Sir Arthur Helps
sagely remarks, the disappointed are ever young.
Young in this sense, and withal energetic, Pizarro,
Almagro, and Luque certainly were, for between
mid-November in 1524 and the end of the year
1528 they succeeded in demonstrating both the
actuality and attainability of that Golden Peru
which had been the objective of Balboa. In ac-
complishing this, however, never perhaps did men
suffer more.

Starting from Panama with one vessel, some
eighty men, and four horses, Pizarro touched at
the Pearl Islands and stopped for six weeks at
Puerto de la Hambre (Hunger Harbor) while the
ship went back to the Pearl Islands for supplies.
Meanwhile Almagro had sailed from Panama with
a second ship and seventy men, and had sought for

156 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Pizarro as far as Puerto de la Hambre and the
river San Juan. But the latter, ere this, had re-
traced his course to a spot in Tierra Firme called
Chicama, and here Almagro finally overtook him.
By this time both leaders had endured much.
Almagro had lost an eye by an arrow, and Pizarro
had nearly starved to death.

It was at this stage of affairs that Pedrarias
permitted himself to be outmaneuvered. He was
preparing to enter Nicaragua and was loath to
spare men to Pizarro and Almagro. In fact, he
was on the point of ordering “the dutiful one”
back to Panama for good, so little did he perceive
the glitter of gold in his direction, when his pur-
pose was stayed by the persuasiveness of Luque
and the resourcefulness of Almagro.

Though Pizarro might not be intellectual, and
though of a surety he was unlettered, he never-
theless was astute. Amid his own active misery
and that of his men he was shrewd enough to keep
personally beyond the reach of the Governor at
Panama. Not for nothing had he served the latter
all these years. He knew his Pedrarias. So it was
Almagro and not Pizarro who went to Panama,
persuaded Pedrarias, for a consideration, to re-
linquish his share in the enterprise to Gaspar de

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

157

Espinosa, and returned with two ships, and with
arms and supplies, to resume the great adventure
to the south.

The two leaders now had with them an unusual
man, one “dextrous in his wit” — the pilot Bar-
tolome Ruiz. The trio, with one hundred and
sixty followers, sailed to the river San Juan and
there separated. Almagro returned to Panama
for more men; Pizarro held the ground gained —
holding gains was ever a Pizarro trait; and Ruiz
navigated the coast of Mundus Novus to the south-
west. By this allotment of parts, opportunity —
the spectacular chance — was all with Ruiz, and
he perceived his advantage. Pushing boldly to
and beyond the equator — the first navigator so
to do in the Pacific — he rent the veil from before
Peru. That is to say, he discovered the Island of
Gallo and Bay of San Mateo, and, coming upon
a raft propelled by a lateen sail and manned by
Indians, he learned of Tumbez and also of Cuzco,
where ruled the Inca and where there was vast
golden treasure.

The crucial hour in the Peruvian expedition
came with the return of Ruiz to the river San
Juan, bringing tidings of what he had seen and
heard; and it was an hour exalted by the heroism

158

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of Pizarro. Almagro had obtained about forty
men in Panama, but it was realized that the Peru-
vians were numerous and organized and that a
strong force would be required to overcome them.
So back once more to Panama went Almagro.
There Pedro de los Rios governed in the stead of
Pedrarias, but he was hardly more willing to supply
men to Pizarro and Almagro than Pedrarias had
been, for the men already with Pizarro, now with-
drawn to the Island of Gallo, had succeeded in
making it known that they were being led to cer-
tain and probably futile death.

Look out, Senor Governor,

For the drover while he’s near,

they wrote in characteristic Spanish doggerel, re-
ferring to Almagro;

Since he goes home to get the sheep
For the butcher [Pizarro] who stays here.

Rios, in fact, insisted upon sending two ships in
command of a jurist, Pedro Tafur, to bring home
the men thus complaining. Still — and here the
value of Luque in the partnership strongly ap-
pears — the orders to Tafur were not so drastic

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

159

but that Pizarro might proceed with the expedi-
tion with such men as chose to abide the issue.

On the Island of Gallo, therefore, Pizarro, upon
the arrival of Tafur, assembled his men and put
the situation squarely before them. On the one
hand lay peril with possible riches; on the other,
safety with assured poverty. The choice was
theirs. Whether the Spanish chieftain actually
drew in the sand with the point of his sword a line
to the south of which he dramatically bade those
pass who would follow him, is much to be doubted;
but in imposing upon his men an unequivocal
choice, he did something very like it. At all events,
some sixteen men, including Ruiz the pilot, Pedro
of Candia, a Greek, and an unnamed negro,
stepped to his side; and with this little company
Pizarro crossed from Gallo to the smaller but
more easily defended Island of Gorgona to await
the coming of Almagro preparatory to advancing
toward Tumbez. On little Gorgona, “in a cloud-
curtained sea, near a fearfully fascinating shore,”
for seven months he waited, starving.

The topography of primitive Mexico was im-
pressive enough: a low-lying Atlantic seaboard; a
gradual rise through tropical vegetation and life to

160 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

a plateau seventy-four hundred feet above sea-level ;
guarding this plateau, a mountain wall accentuated
by twin volcanic peaks seventeen thousand feet
high ; and within the wall, covering the plateau in
considerable part, a cluster of lakes fresh and salt.
But magnificent as was the Mexican scenery, in
Peru, Nature, overpassing the impressive, became
stupendous and sublime. The Peru of the Incas
at the coming of Pizarro stretched along the Pacific
coast of South America from the River Ancasmayu,
north of Quito in Ecuador, to the River Maule,
below Santiago in Chile, a region some twenty-
seven hundred miles in length and comprehending
the modern States of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia,
with part of Chile and Argentina. Its main fea-
tures within the limits of Peru proper — the Peru
of today — were an arid ocean strand less than
one hundred miles in breadth; a double, at times
treble, cordillera or mountain chain — the Andes
— from one to two hundred miles in breadth; and
a district of tropical forest conserving the sources
of the Amazon. To these features should be added
the Antarctic, or Humboldt, Current, flowing up
the western shore, a current so cold as to shroud
the coast in mists and infuse a chill through even
the tropics.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

161

The mere walls of the Andes at their ordinary
elevation attained fourteen thousand feet and more.
Then there were giant peaks ranging between
seventeen and twenty- two thousand feet; and, on
the verge of the Inca dominion, Aconcagua, chief
of the Andean giants, to which nearly twenty-
three thousand feet must be assigned. Mere alti-
tude, however, was not in Peru the engrossing
element in the sublime. That element was aloof-
ness — a weird and stern inhumanity to which all
observers have borne witness. “Savage solitudes
“somber grandeur”; “strange weirdness”; “awe-
inspiring vastness”; “solemn immensity”; “a
waste land where no man goes, or hath gone since
the making of the world!” — such are the words
of description used.

But the grim topography of ancient Peru had
its redeeming feature — sunlight — first on the
mountain tops and then on the surface of Lake
Titicaca. The lake — today about the size of
Lake Erie, but in places some six or seven hun-
dred feet deep, very irregular in shape, and studded
with islands — lay within the plateau of Peru and
Bolivia at an elevation of about thirteen thousand
feet, the largest body of fresh water in the world
at so great an elevation.

162 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

The light of the sun in the Titicaca Valley gave
rise in the course of ages to the barbarism or semi-
civilization of the Inca mode of life; but far earlier
it gave rise to the Peruvian stage of development
in the Megalithic or Great Stone period. “The
Sun, ” to quote a Peruvian writer of Inca descent,
“placed his children near the Lake of Titicaca.”
How long after the Stone Age the age of the Incas
came is a question — several centuries, no doubt.
Suffice it to say that the Megalithic folk were one
day overthrown by invaders from the south, and
the remnant of them took refuge, as is now con-
jectured, in an inaccessible canyon in the valley
of the Urubamba River, northwest of the site of
Cuzco. Here, at Tampu Tocco (Machu Picchu?),
a city peering thousands of feet down upon roaring
rapids, the Incas were bred, and in due time —
somewhere about the twelfth century — became
strong enough to leave their fastness, retake
possession of the Titicaca region, and begin that
movement of conquest and organization which,
with Cuzco as a center, resulted in an empire vaster
than was ruled from Moscow or Aix-la-Chapelle,
from Bagdad or Granada.

At the coming of Pizarro, the distinctive fea-
tures of Peruvian culture — features wherein it

(Pearl Is.

Gorgonal.

I.d IGallc

R de Sa. i Ma

Gulf of'*
Guayiujuil'
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San. Migu<

(first siter V

THE INCA EMPIRE

AT THE TIME OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST

=*&£i*iE*tent of Inca Empire, 1530 (after Means'
Route of Almagro. 1535- 1537

PIZARROS

CONQUEST OF PERU

1531 1533

Scale l: 18,000,000

Route of Pizarro from Panama to Cuzco, January, 1531- November. 1533

PREPARED FOR THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA UNDER THE
DIRECTION OF W. L G..JOERG. AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

JULIUS BIEN LITH NY.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

163

differed palpably from the culture of the Aztecs —
were two : centralized authority in government and
monotheism in religion. The Peruvians (Quichua
tribes) were a far less hardy race than the Aztecs,
yet despite their softness they achieved things
which the Aztecs failed to accomplish. In a sense
they were the Asiatics of America; both actively
and passively they gave evidence of an aptitude
for despotic statecraft. Unlike the Aztecs, they
ruled conquered tribes by direct interposition
through governors and garrisons ; by imposing their
own language (Quichua) ; and by the establish-
ment of military highways. When Cortes invaded
Mexico, Aztec authority, an authority limited to
the levying of tribute, was respected throughout
an area about the size of the State of Massa-
chusetts. When Pizarro invaded Peru, Inca au-
thority was much better respected throughout an
area about equal to that of the United States east of
the Mississippi River. In a word, by the time when
Pizarro arrived, the Peruvians had largely passed
out of the clan stage of development into the na-
tional stage. Particularism, or localism, with its
delegated and revocable leadership within the tribe,
and its leadership by confederation as between
tribes, had given way to incipient monarchy.

164

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

The Peruvian religion, like the religion of Old
Persia, centered in the worship of the Sun. And,
forsooth, what more natural than that the orb
to which in peculiar measure the culture of Peru
owed its existence should become the chief ob-
ject of the adoration of the Peruvian tribesman!
“The dawn — was it not Birth to him? The
mid-day splendor — was it not Power to him?
The sunset — typified it not Death to him?”
The Inca himself was Sun-begotten, and, being
so, bore divine attributes. No Indian official in
North America or in South — in Florida, in Mexi-
co, or in Mundus Novus — could compare in rank
with the Inca, politically a king and religiously
a god.

Centralization of governmental authority in
Peru is decisively shown by the social organization
which prevailed. The primary unit was the family
of five persons, and thence greater units were de-
rived by multiplying by ten until there was ob-
tained the ultimate unit of fifty thousand, the head
of which was directly responsible to the Inca.
Clanship, however, though outgrown politically,
survived economically, for land belonged to the
local community and not to the family or individ-
ual. In agriculture the Peruvians were adept.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

165

They produced the finest of cotton, and grew ex-
cellent maize and potatoes. They made use of
the vicuna and the alpaca as sources of the finest
wool. But, like all things Peruvian, farming was
rigidly supervised and controlled from Cuzco, the
produce being divided into three equal parts,
whereof two went to the state and one only to the
producer.

Countless were the ways in which Inca rule
made itself felt. Everybody was enumerated;
everybody must dwell in a fixed district and follow
a fixed occupation; and, in order that the multi-
tude of tribes incorporated into the nation might
readily be distinguished, each tribe must use a
distinctive dress and method of wearing the hair.
Caste too was universal. Below the Inca and con-
stituting a nobility were lords, priests, warriors,
and civil governors; and below the nobility, con-
stituting commoners, were shepherds of llamas,
hunters, farmers, and artificers.

The softness which characterized the Peruvians
physically, characterized them also intellectually.
They excelled in the arts — in pottery, in weaving,
and in the fashioning of gold, silver, and bronze.
Literature they produced in the form of dramas,
love songs, and hymns of worship — of worship.

166 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

at times, of something more universal than the
Sun:

Oh hear me!

From the sky above.

In which thou mayest be,

From the sea beneath.

In which thou mayest be,

Creator of the world.

Maker of all men!

But they evolved no system of writing; not even a
pictographic one, using only knotted and twisted
cords, called quipus, to perpetuate their thoughts.
At the time of the Spanish conquest of America
there was more promise for the future in the Hel-
lenic-like barbarism, plastic though crude, of the
Aztecs, than in the Asiatic-like barbarism, rigid
though polished, of the Peruvians.

But what of Francisco Pizarro, Pedro de Candia,
and the others of Pizarro’s band whom we left
facing starvation on the little Island of Gorgona
off the coast of Ecuador, and awaiting the coming
of Almagro from Panama with reinforcements?
Ruiz the pilot was not with them, for he had re-
turned north with Tafur. At the end of seven
months, however, he came in Almagro’s stead, and

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

167

the company set out, as Pizarro had planned,
for Tumbez, which is situated on the gulf later
called Guayaquil.

Their course took them past Cape Pasado, the
limit of Ruiz’s exploratory voyage, past the vol-
canic peaks of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, and in
twenty days they reached Tumbez. Here Pizarro
sent ashore parties under Pedro de Candia and
others. The messengers were greeted as superior
beings, very much as Cortes and his followers were
greeted at San Juan de Ulua. Their faces were
fair; they wore long beards; and their identity
as Children of the Light, that Light which in
Peru meant so much, was considered established.
With them, however, on one occasion went the
negro, and to fit him into satisfactory relations
with the emissaries of the Dawn was found difficult.
They tried washing, but to no effect; and the Peru-
vians were obliged to accept him for what he
was — one not to be understood but simply to be
enjoyed. The report of Pizarro’s messengers as
to what was to be seen at Tumbez — a fortress, a
temple, comely Virgins of the Sun, vases of gold —
abundantly confirmed the earlier report of Ruiz,
but Pizarro had few men (the new Governor at
Panama had seen to that) and he resolved to

168 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

betake himself directly to Spain to lay his discov-
ery before the King.

There he arrived early in 1528, accompanied by
the Greek, Pedro de Candia. By the 26th of July,
at Toledo, he had met Charles V, who created him
Governor of all he might discover for a distance of
two hundred leagues “to the south of Santiago,”
a river entering the sea just below the latitude of
the Island of Gallo. The King made Almagro and
Luque the Captain and the Bishop of Tumbez;
Bartolome Ruiz, Grand Pilot of the South Sea;
Pedro de Candia, Chief of Artillery ; and the heroes
of the Isle of Gorgona, knights and cavaliers.

From Toledo, Pizarro went to Trujillo, his
native town, and drew to his support his brothers,
Hernando, Juan, Gonzalo, and Martin of Alcan-
tara, all capable, all brave, and all except the first
described as, “like Pizarro himself, illegitimate,
poor, ignorant, and avaricious.” The proposed
expedition to Peru, unlike the expeditions of prior
Spanish adventurers, did not attract followers;
and it was with only one hundred and eighty men
and thirty horses that in December, 1531, a year
after his return from Spain, the Estremaduran
was able to set sail with three ships from Panama
for Tumbez.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

169

In the Peruvian conquest there may be said to
have been three definite stages : one of waiting and
preparation; one of active hostilities; and one of
accomplishment. The stage of waiting and prep-
aration, of patience and endurance, has already
been glanced at. Here Pizarro shone. From the
days when, under Ojeda, Balboa, and Pedrarias,
he had served on the terrible Isthmus, to those
when he challenged riches and renown on the
hardly less terrible coast of Peru, there was nothing
that he did not suffer. At San Juan River, toils
of the jungle within reach of the hideous dangling
boa and of the stealthy alligator; on the Island
of Gallo, nauseating food, thunder, lightning, and
torrential rain; on Gorgona, plague of insects, in-
cessant, intolerable, inescapable. All these things,
with starvation often added, Pizarro suffered, but
though in distress he did not repine but bravely
endured.

Tumbez he reached in the spring of 1532, and
here the invaders were joined by Hernando de
Soto with one hundred men and fifty horses from
Nicaragua. Thus reenforced, Pizarro, as a means
of establishing himself in the country he had set
out to despoil and convert, resolved to found a
town. Choosing a site near the sea, some thirty

170 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

leagues to the south of Tumbez, he founded San
Miguel, the first European settlement in the do-
main ruled by the Incas. Having secured a base,
the next step was to locate and appraise the forces
of opposition. He accordingly sent De Soto, with
a party of horse, along the foot of the first of the
several great chains of the Andes, to gather infor-
mation. What Pizarro learned was that in Peru
there was at that time a legitimate ruler named
“Cuzco, son of old Cuzco,” and that he had a
brother, Atahualpa, who was in rebellion but to
whom Fortune had been so far favorable that he
had defeated young Cuzco and gone on conquering
the land southward to a place called Caxamarca.
Caxamarca, Pizarro learned, was beyond the
mountain wall which confronted him, but at a
distance of only twelve or fifteen days’ march.

Traditionally the first Inca of Peru was Manco
Ccapac, who flourished about 1100 and built or
rebuilt the town of Cuzco. Historically, how-
ever, the first Inca was Viracocha, whose reign fell
somewhere about 1380. In 1500 the Inca was
Huayna Ccapac — the “old Cuzco” of Pizarro’s
informants — and under him it was that the Inca
dominion was projected northward beyond Quito
and southward into Chile. Huayna Ccapac, “old

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

171

Cuzco,” was succeeded by his legitimate son Huas-
car, young Cuzco. But Huascar had a brother,
Atahualpa, son of Huayna by a concubine, daugh-
ter of the last independent ruler of Quito, and,
in order to secure to him a share in the succession,
Huayna at his death divided the royal possessions,
assigning to Atahualpa the Quito inheritance and
to Huascar the remainder. The results usual under
such circumstances followed: strife between the
brothers arose, and in the contest not only had Ata-
hualpa triumphed but he had succeeded in making
Huascar captive.

As between Pizarro and Atahualpa the situation
was quite like that which a dozen years before had
obtained between Cortes and Montezuma. In
both instances, invaders, believed to be engen-
dered of the Sea or dropped from the Sky, sought
from a seaboard base to overcome rulers estab-
lished in the mountains as protectors of capitals
which were believed to be the repositories of un-
told wealth. There were, however, certain differ-
ences. The way to Atahualpa, barred as it was by
the mighty outer wall of the Andes, was more
difficult than the way to Montezuma. But, off-
setting this, Cortes’s advance was hindered by
every subtlest art of Indian subterfuge, while that

172

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of Pizarro was uninterfered with. Then again,
Montezuma had, as he thought, laid for Cortes a
trap in Mexico-Tenoehtitlan itself; whereas Ata-
hualpa, for aught that appears, received Pizarro at
Caxamarca with such sublime faith in his own
abounding resources that he felt for him little
other than contempt. But let the narrative dis-
close its own tale.

It was in September that Pizarro set out from
San Miguel. His force was in all one hundred and
seventy-seven men, sixty-seven of whom were
horsemen. At first the country was compara-
tively level, watered by mountain-fed aqueducts,
and set with orchards and fields of waving grain.
Withal the air was sweet with the breath of flowers,
and the people were friendly. But the soldiers,
some of them, showed discontent; and to meet it
Pizarro promptly sent back to San Miguel nine
men who lacked heart for the great enterprise.

Cortes, under more trying circumstances, had
dealt with disaffection by scuttling his ships and
by meting out drastic punishments. Yet to the
men of Cortes the evidence of riches ahead was far
stronger than to the men of Pizarro, for the latter
had beheld naught to compare with the gold and
silver wheels presented to Cortes by Montezuma.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 173

To Pizarro, therefore, relieved of his disaffected
element but facing mountains and with no treasure
in sight, it remained to urge forward his command
by appealing to their piety — their sense of duty
as propagandists of the Faith. Besides being
primitive, proud, and romantic, the Spaniard, it
will be recalled, was devout. Devoutness, indeed,
as a spur to action, held with him a place second
only to avarice.

Pizarro’s chief obstacle was the Andes, with
“their crests of snow glittering high in the heavens
— such a wild chaos of magnificence and beauty as
no other mountain scenery in the world [could]
show.” Up this barrier struggled foot-soldiers and
horsemen, the latter dismounted and tugging at
their beasts. Here the path hugged the base of a
toppling cliff; there it shunned a reeling abyss;
while ever above the crawling Spanish line hung,
greedy for mishap, that obscene bird of carrion, the
Peruvian condor. Near the summit of the range
the invaders came upon one of the military roads
of the Incas, a road which connected Cuzco with
Quito, and which in point of length has been
likened to a conceivable highway connecting Calais
with Constantinople. It was a road, however,
upon which no wheel turned, for, unlike the early

174 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Egyptians, the Peru-
vians, with whom “everything stopped short,”
were unacquainted with the principle of the wheel.

On this journey upward to Caxamarca, this New
World anabasis, Pizarro was met and waited
upon, as Cortes had been on his journey, by suc-
cessive embassies. One came under the escort of
De Soto, whom the Spanish leader had sent to
reconnoiter, and met Pizarro at the foot of the
range; while the others, whereof there were two,
met him near the summit. All brought gifts: the
first, an elaborate drinking-cup of stone, woolen
stuffs embroidered in gold and silver, and perfume;
the second, several llamas; and the third, Peruvian
sheep, chicha or “fermented juice of the maize,”
to employ a delicate periphrasis, and, what to the
Spaniards was more to the point, “golden goblets”
from which to quaff this beverage. Mid-Novem-
ber was now at hand and Pizarro had bested his
great obstacle. He had scaled the Andes. Be-
neath him spread a valley, stream-traversed and
highly cultivated, and in this valley he descried
three things : the town of Caxamarca, steam rising
from hot mineral springs, and — did his pulse
quicken? — “a white cloud of pavilions covering
the ground as thick as snowflakes.”

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 175

Pizarro entered Caxamarca on the 15th of No-
vember at the hour of vespers. His first act was
to send De Soto with twenty horsemen to announce
to Atahualpa his arrival; and his second, to send
his brother Hernando after De Soto with twenty
more horsemen as a reenforcement. The Inca, a
man of thirty, sat at the door of his tent, cross-
legged on a low cushion, surrounded by male and
female attendants. He wore a tunic and robe, but
what distinguished him as a ruler was the head-
dress, the borla. This consisted of a fringed cord
of red vicuna wool wound several times around the
head, the fringe depending over the eyes. As lord
of both Quito and Cuzco, and especially of Quito
through his mother, Atahualpa would no doubt
have felt himself entitled to wear (as later he did
wear) the insignia of Quito, a string of royal
emeralds. Seated on his cushion, the Inca held his
eyes fixed upon the ground; nor did he raise them
or otherwise respond when Hernando Pizarro,
with grave Spanish mien, invited him to visit his
brother in the town. His thoughts — what were
they? In all probability the question in the mind
of Montezuma in the case of Cortes: Were these
newcomers gods?

It was the horse, as we have seen, that more than

176

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

aught else in Indian eyes gave to the Spaniard the
seeming of a god. Atahualpa had kept himself in-
formed regarding this weird creature, and in a
measure was fortified against the terror of him.
Through messengers from the Quito country he
had learned that the Spaniard and his horse were
not “all one animal,” for on the coast a rider had
been observed to fall from a horse. Confirming
this idea of the separability of horse and rider, had
come news that at night the horses were unsaddled.
Nor was the horse immortal, for a cacique of the
neighborhood of San Miguel had sent word that
he personally had killed one.

Glancing up at length from his reverie, Ata-
hualpa said to Hernando Pizarro that the Span-
iards could be no great warriors, for the San Miguel
curaca (cacique) had killed three, besides a horse.
Nettled at this speech so weighed and measured
in its audacity, Hernando Pizarro replied that one
horse, let alone riders, could conquer the whole
country; and, as if practically to substantiate
the claim, De Soto, the best mounted man in
the Spanish group, struck spurs into his steed,
dashed across the plain, and, wheeling in graceful
circles, reined in the animal so close to the Inca
that foam from his sides bespattered the royal

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

177

garments. But Atahualpa, self-schooled against
terror of the horse, did not flinch. To him evi-
dently the Spaniards, if gods at all, were not for-
midable ones; and when he consented, as now he
did, to visit Pizarro in camp the next day, it was,
as the chronicle has it, “with the smile of a man
who did not very much esteem us.”

That night the Spaniards knew fear. The
twinkling distant camp fires of the Peruvian host —
fires likened in multitude to the stars of heaven —
impressed them with a sense of their numerical
inferiority, and again Pizarro found it expedient to
warm their zeal and stiffen their courage by ap-
pealing to them as sons of the Church and prop-
agandists of the Faith. As for Pizarro himself,
he had a plan which had been long in his mind:
he would seize the person of Atahualpa, even as
Cortes had seized the person of Montezuma, and
all would be well.

The town of Caxamarca itself was not large. Its
distinguishing feature, however, was an extensive
triangular plaza — “larger than any plaza in
Spain” — enclosed on two sides by long low build-
ings. These buildings may have been communal
dwellings, for they are spoken of as divided on the
interior into blocks, each block comprising a suite

12

178 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

of rooms. If the buildings in question were com-
munal, they serve to illustrate Peruvian nation-
making as in this quarter something yet in process,
the clan here not having been superseded by the
family. But there were other buildings — survi-
vals of the early medicine lodge and council lodge
— temples and great halls, all very much as in
Mexico-Tenochtitlan.

Of the great halls there were three, each giving
through a wide opening upon the plaza. In one,
Pizarro stationed a squadron of horsemen under
Hernando Pizarro; in another, a squadron under
De Soto; and in the third, a squadron under a
doughty cavalier, newly arrived, Sebastian de
Benalcazar. The foot-soldiers as a body he placed
in concealment round about; but twenty such,
picked for their prowess, he attached to his own
person, taking with them a central station, well
concealed, whence he could sally forth in any direc-
tion. Pedro de Candia, be it added, trained upon
the plaza, from a “fortress” above it, the artillery
of the invaders — two falconets.

Such was the disposition of the Spanish leaders
when, about noon of the 16th of November, Ata-
hualpa emerged from his camp on his way to visit
Pizarro in Caxamarca, the lion in his lair. He

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

179

was attended by thousands, and the spectacle
offered was that of Montezuma advancing to meet
Cortes. But when within a short distance of the
town, what should the Peruvian monarch do but
stop the progress and prepare to pitch his tents!
This Pizarro saw with dismay, for his men, long
kept at high tension, must speedily find relief in
action or succumb to fear. He accordingly dis-
patched an earnest request to Atahualpa that he
resume the march and enter the town that evening,
where every arrangement for his reception and
entertainment had been made.

The Inca granted this request and just before
sunset the “Child of the Sun” passed the gates.
In front, as with Montezuma, came runners, clear-
ing the way of dirt and obstructions and singing
sonorous songs — songs pronounced “hellish” in
the chronicle. Then came dancers. Then caciques
of divers grades bearing “hammers” of silver or
copper, and conspicuous for checkered or white
liveries. Those immediately about the Inca were
caciques or noblemen of special dignity, wearing
head-dresses ornamented with gold and silver,
breast armor of gold plates, and great ear-studs.
All more or less seem to have been distinguished
by vestments of blue — that azure ( azul or sky

180 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

color) so marked and evidently so significant in the
apparel of Montezuma.

The Inca himself, like the “ Chief-of-Men, ” was
borne aloft in a litter. He sat on a throne of gold
within a baldaquin lined with the brilliant plu-
mage of the parrakeet and covered with gold and
silver plates. A man of vigor — large, with bold
eyes somewhat bloodshot — his aspect was com-
manding and even fierce. As lord of Quito, he
wore the royal emeralds. As Child of the Sun, he
wore the borla; and in addition a golden diadem
garnished with the wing feathers of the caraquen-
que. It was his right, moreover, to be preceded by
a standard bearer carrying a banner emblazoned
with the rainbow. In any event he was an im-
pressive figure, as, dividing to the right and left,
his numerous escort fell away, leaving him alone,
the observed of all observers in the plaza.

No Spaniard was in sight, and Atahualpa was
perplexed. “What has become of these fellows?”
he demanded with impatience. Hereupon Pizarro
sent forth to meet the Indian ruler, and to account
to him for the presence of the Spaniards in his
country, the priest and spiritual leader of the ex-
pedition, Vicente de Valverde, later Bishop of Cuz-
co. Valverde of course could speak to Atahualpa

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

181

only through the interpreter, a young Indian cap-
tured at Tumbez, named Fellipillo or Little Philip,
who was for the purpose a feeble dependence, in no
sense a second Marina or Aguilar. What Father
Valverde undertook to impress upon Atahualpa
was that there was one true God; that He had
sent to earth his Son Jesus Christ; that Christ, be-
ing put to death, had left his power in the hands
of St. Peter, who, dying, had passed it on to the
Popes of Rome. One of the Popes, the one now
alive, had heard that the Indians of the world,
instead of worshiping the true God, “adored idols
and likenesses of the devil.” Thereupon he had
given it into the hands of “Charles, King of Spain
and Monarch of the whole earth, ” to “conquer the
Indian nations” and bring them to “the knowl-
edge of God and the obedience of the Church.”
To effect this conquest, Charles had commis-
sioned “Don Francisco Pizarro — now here.”
“If thou shalt deny and refuse to obey,” fer-
vently exclaimed the priest, “know that thou
shalt be persecuted with fire and sword without
mercy!”

What Atahualpa probably gathered out of this
harangue, as rendered in what has been called
the “deplorable Cuzcan” of Fellipillo, was that

182 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

a distant mysterious lord — a “white stranger’s”
lord — operating as the agent of a mysterious
deity — or of several such, for the Trinity had
figured in the discourse — claimed his allegiance
and tribute and meant to deprive him and the
people of independence. Fear of the Spaniards as
themselves gods, or at least preternatural beings,
does not seem to have much dwelt in the mind of
the Inca, for observing that Father Valverde held
in his hand a book, the Bible, whence he had de-
rived the matter of his exhortation, Atahualpa
demanded to see it. It was clasped, and the Indian
was unable to open it. The priest stepped to the
side of the litter to give help, but Atahualpa, re-
senting the intrusion, forced the clasps back, ran
his eyes helplessly through the leaves, and cast the
holy volume violently upon the ground.

Not only did the Inca spurn the Word of God,
but he at the same time said that he knew how the
Spaniards had maltreated his people all the way
from Tumbez, even to burning some of them alive,
and that he required reparation. Here then was
defiance complete — defiance of all the Powers : of
the Powers Temporal as well as of those Spirit-
ual; of Emperor, and of Francisco Pizarro, as well
as of God, Christ, St. Peter, and the Pope; and

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

183

punishment was called for. The hour — the mo-
ment — had come!

On hearing Father Val verde’s report, Pizarro
informed his brother Hernando. The latter in turn
informed Pedro de Candia, who discharged his
falconets — the signal agreed upon — and the
horsemen everywhere burst from cover. In ad-
vance of all, sword in hand, and shouting “San-
tiago,” ran Pizarro. His object was the royal litter,
but ere he could reach it the attendants of Ata-
hualpa had interposed themselves, and there en-
sued a furious mdlee. In the end, amid great
slaughter, the litter was overturned and Atahual-
pa, the god-descended, his robes in tatters, dia-
dem and borla torn from his brow, was dragged
forth a captive.

Montezuma fell before Cortes, a victim of vacil-
lation, the result of timidity bred of superstition.
Atahualpa fell before Pizarro, a victim of assurance
which was the result of arrogance. Entering Caxa-
marca late in the day, Atahualpa had notified
Pizarro that he would spend the night within its
gates, but with only a fraction of his forces, and
these “unarmed.” What need, forsooth, of arms,
of copper-pointed spears, of bows and arrows, and
of lassos, had Atahualpa? Was he not Inca? Was

184 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

he not literally Child of the Sun? “Your God, ” he
is said to have boasted to Father Valverde, “was,
you say, slain by men, the work of his hands; my
god,” pointing proudly to the sinking Sun, “dies
but to live again!”

That November evening, 1532, Pizarro and Ata-
hualpa supped together. Breaking bread with the
defeated seems to have been an amiable if some-
what ironical Spanish custom, whether those so
honored were themselves Spaniards or not. Cris-
t6bal de Olid had supped with his prisoners Gil
Gonzalez and Francisco de las Casas, but only to
have his hospitality requited by slashes at his
throat. In the case of Atahualpa such requital
was not to be apprehended. The Inca was too
dazed to think of trying it himself, and his followers
were too profoundly overawed. But, dazed though
Atahualpa was, he did not so remain. On the mor-
row after his overthrow he noticed that, while the
Spaniards brought in as booty many bales of beau-
tifully woven woolen and cotton fabrics, the things
which as booty they esteemed most were the royal
utensils of gold and silver. If it were gold and
silver the white strangers coveted — he personally
much preferred glass — these metals abounded in
Peru. Why not purchase with them his own

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

185

freedom? Freedom was valuable to him just
then, for the legitimate Inca, Huascar his brother,
was himself a captive, and when the latter should
learn of the captivity of Atahualpa, what plots —
plots even with the invaders — might he not con-
coct against him? One day, therefore, as he and
Pizarro stood in a chamber of Pizarro’s quarters,
he suddenly offered to cover the floor with gold if
his freedom were granted.

The offer provoked only a smile, and Atahualpa
was piqued. He stepped proudly to the wall, and
indicating a point thereon as high as he could
reach, offered to fill the entire room to that point
with gold. He also offered to fill a smaller room,
adjoining, twice over with silver. The only condi-
tions he made were that the metals should not
first be melted down, but should retain the form
of the objects into which they had been wrought,
and that he should have two months within which
to fulfill his undertaking.

Then ensued one of the most wonderful episodes
in history. Each day there went forth from the
presence of Atahualpa couriers to the four quar-
ters of the Empire; and ere long, in answer, porters
began to appear bearing all manner of gold and sil-
ver objects: jars, vases, ewers, salvers, and goblets

186 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

from the temples; to say naught of hammered
golden sheets, an occasional “throne,” “pedestal,”
or “sun.” They brought, too, wonderful things
from the official dwellings — the “palaces” — of
the Inca: such, for example, as “fountains designed
to emit sparkling jets of gold”; miniature gold
birds and beasts; trees also; plants with leaves,
flowers, and fruit; fields of maize with leaves, heads,
canes, roots, and flowers; and flowers of the field
with petals, stems, and leaves. So gleaming indeed
were the long files of porters under their golden
packs, that as beheld afar they seemed veritable
threads of gold caught from point to point across
the landscape.

A circumstance which helped materially in col-
lecting the treasure was that Hernando Pizarro
and Hernando de Soto had conceived for Ata-
hualpa a genuine liking. A suite of rooms was
assigned him, and within these he maintained his
customary state. Here he amused himself with his
concubines; here with great animation and skill he
played dice and chess, games learned from his con-
querors; and here he received his vassals in audi-
ence — none of whom, however great, presumed
to enter before him without first removing his
sandals and placing a burden on his back.

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

187

The point to which Atahualpa had agreed to fill
Pizarro’s chamber with gold was some nine feet
from the floor, and the floor dimensions were about
seventeen by twenty-two feet. As this space of
over three thousand cubic feet began to gradually
lessen under the heaps and piles of gold thrown
into it, did Francisco Pizarro reflect? Twenty
years before — first in Comogre’s country, then
on the peak in Darien, and finally on the shores
of the Gulf of San Miguel — he, a dutiful lieuten-
ant to Balboa, had heard intimations of Peru, of
Peru the golden somewhere to the south. Since
then Balboa had forfeited his head, and he alone
had found Peru. Had Columbus found it, or Be-
haim, or Alonso Pinzon, how each would have
wrestled with geography to prove that he had
found, if not Cathay and Cipangu, at least India,
at least the Golden Chersonese ! Columbus on his
fourth voyage would have seen in Peru — capping
“the stem of the earth,” as from its altitude it
might well have been thought to do — the “Earth-
ly Paradise”; and to Cortes, had he found it,
it would have answered, more even than did
Mexico, to the requirements of that land whence
“Solomon is said to have brought the gold for
the Temple.”

188 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

It took longer to fill Pizarro’s chamber with gold
up to the nine-foot point than Atahualpa had
counted on, for, as the drain became severe, the
public guardians, especially in the temples, began
to secrete their treasures. At length, Pizarro wax-
ing highly impatient, Atahualpa, who too was
impatient, proposed that the former send out col-
lectors of his own. They might go to Pachacamac,
Peru’s shrine to “an unknown god,” very ancient
and very rich; or they might go directly to Cuzco,
where more than anywhere else the gold and silver
of the Inca government was massed; and at either
place they might help themselves. They went to
both places, and what they brought back was,
from Pachacamac, twenty-seven loads ( cargas ) of
gold and two thousand marks of silver; and from
Cuzco, two hundred loads of gold and twenty-five
loads of silver. A “load” (333 pounds) was what
could be carried by four Indians, and as part of
several such loads from Cuzco there were brought
seven hundred gold plates stripped from the
Temple of the Sun, each plate being ten or twelve
inches wide, and weighing from four to twelve
pounds.

It was now June, 1533, and although the nine-
foot level in Pizarro’s chamber was not yet quite

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

189

attained, it was deemed expedient to melt down the
collection and value it preparatory to a division.
So valued, it reached a total of 1,326,539 pesos de
oro; or, counting the purchasing power of a peso as
$11.67, nearly $15,500,000 in American money.
Nor did this include the silver of the smaller cham-
ber, which was estimated at 51,610 marks. No such
treasure had ever before been amassed by a con-
queror. So gigantic was it, so staggering, that had
Pizarro sought for it a parallel, he must needs have
betaken himself, not to Marco Polo’s East or that
of Ibn Batuta, but to the East of the Arabian
Nights Entertainments. “The genie [so runs a
familiar tale] returned with forty black slaves each
bearing on his head a heavy tray of pure gold; . . .
each tray was covered with silver tissue embroid-
ered with flowers of gold. . . . The genie dis-
appeared but presently returned with the forty
slaves, ten of whom carried each a purse contain-
ing a thousand pieces of gold. . . . But most of
all to be coveted were four large buffets profusely
furnished with large flagons, basins, and cups, all
of massy gold.” So was it with Aladdin, and
so, without hyperbole, was it with Pizarro.

Desiring to impress his King with the wealth of
Peru, that Peru which he alone had conquered.

190

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Pizarro, in the same year in which he melted down
his treasure, sent to Spain his brother Hernando
with the fifth portion belonging to the Crown and
with half a million pesos de oro besides. The cus-
tom-house at Seville, it is said, overflowed with
“solid ingots,” not to mention “vases, animals,
flowers, and fountains, all of pure gold.” The
populace were dazed; the Court aghast, for success-
ful adventurers were not loved at Court; and the
King, delighted. Cortes had created a flurry with
his “wheels of gold and silver” sent home in 1519;
and had all of his “gleanings” from Montezuma
been got together in one place and at one time,
they would have made an enduring impression.
But for the most part Spain never saw them, for
they were either captured by Francis I of France
or lost during the noche triste. When Cortes and
Pizarro met at Palos, in 1528, the cry in Spain was
all “Cortes and Mexico!” After the coming of
Hernando Pizarro to Seville, in 1534, the tables
were completely turned. The cry then, and ever
after as long as Cortes and Pizarro lived, was
“Pizarro and Peru!”

But to go back a little. It was midsummer,
1533, and Pizarro had decided to march to Cuzco,

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

191

his real objective since the day when Bartolome
Ruiz had heard of it and its splendor from the
Indians on the raft off Tumbez. Seven full months
had he lingered at Caxamarca, and all the gold
that could be gathered there he had obtained.
Besides, Almagro was again in Peru. He had
landed late in December, 1532, with three ships
piloted by Ruiz, and with a force consisting of
one hundred and fifty foot-soldiers and fifty horse-
men. Pizarro was glad of the reenforcement.
Whether he was glad of the personal presence of
Almagro is not so certain. Almagro was Pizarro’s
“partner” — his only active partner, for Luque
was now dead — and, to apply the motto of
the present chapter, “he that has partners has
masters.”

If Almagro was Pizarro’s “master,” this was a
relationship for the future to disclose. Up to the
present Almagro’s only recompense for toil and a
lost eye had been the captaincy of Tumbez, what-
ever that might import, and against Pizarro his
soul was bitter. Nor was the news which greeted
him at San Miguel, whither he came from Tumbez,
of a sort to appease. Pizarro had scaled the Andes;
had seized the Inca of Peru; and from the latter
was exacting an enormous ransom. In these

192 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

momentous transactions, where did Almagro, Pi-
zarro’s “partner,” figure? Did he figure at all?
Almagro determined to see. With his men he, too,
scaled the Andes and in February, 1533, was at
Caxamarca. Hence Pizarro’s decision to march
to Cuzco; for not only had he exhausted the gold to
be obtained at Caxamarca, but, in order to meet
the expectations and demands of his followers, now
by Almagro’s arrival quite doubled in number, he
needed yet more gold. Of the fifteen and one-half
million dollars in Pizarro’s hands, as revealed by
the melting down and weighing of his main treas-
ure, Almagro’s company would seem to have been
quieted with some two hundred and thirty-three
thousand dollars. Their harvest, it was explained
to them, awaited them in Cuzco. What Almagro
himself consented to receive is nowhere told. To
Pizarro and his men, as those by whom thus far
the conquest had actually been achieved, there
fell immense sums : to Pizarro himself, nearly seven
hundred thousand dollars, to say nothing of two
thousand three hundred marks of silver; to Her-
nando Pizarro, nearly three hundred and sixty-
three thousand dollars, without counting silver;
to De Soto, two hundred and seventy thousand
dollars, not counting silver; to each horseman, one

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 193

hundred and three thousand dollars; and to the
foot-soldiers, the most meritorious of them, nearly
fifty-two thousand dollars each.

And now on every hand, and especially from
Almagro’s contingent, the cry arose: “On to Cuz-
co!” “But, ” said Pizarro, “wait! What about
Atahualpa? ”

The Indian monarch had in substance, if not in
letter, kept his word regarding his ransom and
was now demanding freedom. Should freedom be
given him? Early in his captivity the news that
he was paying vast sums to Pizarro as a ransom
had come to the ears of the legitimate Inca, who
was in captivity near Cuzco; and Huascar, pro-
ceeding to do what Atahualpa had surmised he
might, had surreptitiously entered into relations
with the Spaniards and offered a greater ransom for
freedom than the ransom offered by Atahualpa.
What a situation was here! And how completely
to the Spanish advantage ! It admitted the playing
off of one hostile element against another, and a
Spaniard like Cortes would have triumphed by it.
But Pizarro was not Cortes. What he did was to
leave Huascar in Atahualpa’s power, and at the
same time incautiously let it be known to Ata-
hualpa that Huascar was outbidding him. The

13

194

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

natural result followed: Huascar, by order of Ata-
hualpa, was quietly put to death.

Atahualpa at liberty must in any event be to the
Spaniards no small menace; but, with Huascar out
of the way, the menace was yet greater. What
should be done with him? The general voice was
for killing him. Against this some protested —
notably Hernando de Soto; and had Hernando
Pizarro been then in Peru, his protest probably
would have backed that of De Soto. But the
general voice so far prevailed that in August the
Inca was brought to trial. Some of the charges
against him were unfair, as for example that he
was an idolater and that he kept concubines; but
two of them may have been genuinely conceived:
one that he had injured the Spaniards by diverting
part of his treasure; and the other, that he had
done so by the murder of Huascar. A final charge
there was, and its genuineness was manifest, to
wit, that he was plotting an insurrection against
Spanish rule.

The result of the proceedings was that Ata-
hualpa was found guilty and was condemned to
death at the stake. But on his recanting his own
faith and professing himself a Christian, his sen-
tence was commuted. At night, on August 29,

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 195

1533, in the plaza of Caxamarca, he was strangled
with a bowstring.

For the march to Cuzco all at last was clear. A
start was set for early in September, and when the
day arrived loud did the Spanish bugles shout from
their golden throats. No more uncertainty! No
more delay ! Ho now for El Dorado ! Ho for regal
Cuzco and the Temple of the Sun ! The way along
the Quito-Cuzco road was precipitous, and owing
to the cliffs and stairways, chasms and raging
torrents — the latter spanned only by swaying
bridges of osier — the Spanish force of nearly
five hundred men had much ado to keep a foot-
ing. Nor was this all. On the march the Con-
queror was much harassed by Indian attacks,
and, suspecting these to be instigated by one of
Atahualpa’s captains, Challcuchima by name,
whom he had with him as a hostage, he ruth-
lessly destroyed that worthy by burning him at
the stake.

Pizarro entered Cuzco two hours before sunset
on November 15, 1533, a year to a day from the
time when he had entered Caxamarca. How did
this capital of the Incas look to him? Situated a
hundred and fifty miles northwest of Titicaca, it

196 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

lay in a valley dominated by steep bills and distant
mountains. On one of the hills reposed a huge
Cyclopean fortress, Sacsahuaman, accentuated by
towers square and round, a relic of that Megalithic
or Great Stone Age which preceded the Inca period.
But what presumably attracted Pizarro most were
the structures of the town itself, the palaces and
temples wherein lay the treasure. Grouped in the
main about a plaza, with heavy inward-sloping
stone walls pierced by doorways broader at bottom
than top, they made a picture that was curiously
Egyptian. These buildings were numerous, too,
for not only was the town large — over a hundred
thousand souls, perhaps — but when any great
Cuzcan died, Inca or nobleman, his abode passed
to no successor but was maintained in all respects
as though he were yet alive.

Far more than Mexico-Tenochtitlan was Cuzco
a holy city. The supremacy there of one religious
cult, Sun worship, fostered monotheism, and mono-
theism demanded a supreme temple. Hence that
shrine of the Sun, noblest edifice in America since
the days of splendor in Yucatan, a sight of which
the Spaniards had so ardently craved. There now
it lay in a court of flowers, one end rounded into
an apse, its outer wall embellished by a golden

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

197

cornice three feet in depth. Pizarro must soon
have visited the interior — that interior whence
largely had come the seven hundred golden plates,
and where now was to be seen the Sun himself in
the guise of a resplendent golden disc flanked
by mummies of Incas, his departed children, posed
on golden thrones, sustained by golden pedestals.

But in Cuzco religion did not exhaust itself with
one temple, even though that temple was supreme.
The whole city reflected religion — indeed was
based upon it. So true was this, that the Center,
the “Polaris” of the Empire, as distinguished from
the “Four Quarters,” was the center of the plaza
of Cuzco. Here, in the form of a golden vase, was
a fountain; and about this, before dawn on the day
of the summer solstice, Peruvians were wont to
gather by tribes to worship. And to worship what?
Not an image of the Sun, but the Sun himself,
if perchance he should appear. That he would
appear was not taken for granted. He might not.
Would he show his face on this great day? Anxiety
reigned, dread even. Then “over the mountains
the silent herald Dawn, and — following — the
Sun!” All very splendid, but not anything that
Pizarro saw or would have rejoiced in had he seen
it. To him, no less than to Father Valverde, the

198 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

whole ceremony would have been utter infidelity,
rank idolatry, a celebration to be straightway sup-
pressed, as in fact it was.

With regard to the treasure actually uncovered
at Cuzco or on the way thither — slabs of silver
twenty feet long by one foot broad, gold-en-
wrapped mummies of Inca queens, and other
precious objects — the quantity was vast, but not
so vast, not by half, as the quantity already
divided. Almagro’s men, by waiting for their
harvest until Cuzco was reached, did not fare as
well as they would have fared at Caxamarca.
Certain it is, though, that they fared too well
to show signs of discontent. Discontent on their
part, when it came, as come it inevitably did, was
from a cause quite different.

Three definite stages of the Peruvian conquest
there were: that of preparation, that of active
hostilities, and that of accomplishment. It is,
however, a peculiarity of this conquest that the
last stage, that of amassing treasure and of seiz-
ing dominion, instead of following upon the state
of active hostilities, largely preceded it and gave
rise to it. Now, therefore, for a glance at the stage
of active hostilities. Here Pizarro does not shine
as he did in the preparatory stage of patience

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

199

and endurance. A new man dominates the scene,
Pizarro’s brother, Hernando.

Hernando Pizarro is ever a figure knightly and
romantic. Unlike the rest of his family, he was
neither illegitimate nor ignorant, though like them
he was poor and had his way to make. That he
could be chivalrous appears from his attitude
toward Atahualpa, an attitude shared by an asso-
ciate, Hernando de Soto. In these of our pages
devoted to Mexico and Peru, three figures stand
out as representatives of that chivalry illustrated
in the Amadis of Gaul and satirized in Don Quixote:
not so much Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Hernan
Cortes, and Francisco Pizarro as, rather, Juan de
Grijalva, Hernando de Soto, and Hernando Pi-
zarro, men whom we instinctively associate with
scenes of the tourney, with “splintered spear-
shafts,” and “shivered brands,” but hardly less
with “perfume and flowers that lightly rain from
ladies’ hands.”

Hernando Pizarro it was, to cite an incident
romantic as well as practical, who, on the ex-
pedition which he led to Pachacamac, gave the
memorable order that the Spanish horses were to
be shod with silver in lieu of iron. Hernando
Pizarro, too, it was who, as Pizarro’s emissary to

200

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Spain, performed with courtliness the duty of lay-
ing at the royal feet the incomparable riches of the
Incas. A further duty in Spain he discharged, and
one surely not lacking in chivalry: he assented to
and even promoted the interests of Almagro, whom
he did not like, by joining with the latter’s agent
in procuring for him, along with the title of Maris-
cal or Marshal, a grant of two hundred leagues
beginning where Pizarro’s grant left off. But
where did Pizarro’s grant leave off? To this ques-
tion the answer involves much: the story of Peru
to the death of Almagro ; then to the imprisonment
of Hernando Pizarro for that death; and finally to
the death of the Conqueror himself.

Returning from Spain in the summer of 1535,
Hernando Pizarro brought with him orders ex-
tending the jurisdiction of Pizarro seventy leagues
beyond the two hundred to the south of the River
Santiago earlier allotted him, and bestowing upon
him the title of Marques de los Atavillos. But
already at Cuzco it had come to Almagro’s knowl-
edge, and hence to Pizarro’s, that the former had
received a grant to the south of that of Pizarro.
Therefore the question: Did two hundred and
seventy leagues south from the River Santiago
fall short of Cuzco, and so deliver that prize to

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

201

Almagro; or beyond it, and so confirm it to Pi-
zarro? Contending strenuously that Cuzco fell to
him, Almagro nevertheless, soon after June, 1535,
set out for Chile, a land possibly richer than Peru,
one in any event undeniably his to exploit. De
Soto, eager for adventure, would fain have gone
with the Marshal but failed to gain consent.
There did go, however, an auxiliary party of
natives under the chief medicine-man of Cuzco,
the Villac Umu.

Such, as between the partners Pizarro and Al-
magro, was the situation when Pizarro found him-
self beset by another difficulty. The Indians of
Peru were at last awake. In behalf of their land
and their religion, of the ashes of their fathers and
the temples of their gods, they had begun against
the Spaniards a mighty revolt.

By the time this revolt broke forth on April 18,
1536, Pizarro had accomplished three considerable
undertakings, or rather one such undertaking, for
the other two had been accomplished for him
rather than by him. Late in 1533, or early in 1534,
Sebastian de Benalcazar had seized Quito. Then
Pedro de Alvarado, our earlier acquaintance,
blond and daredevil, having heard of Quito as
a rich quarry, had disembarked against it at

202 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Caraques, but had been headed off by Almagro
backed by Benalcazar, and for a consideration
called “his expenses,” had agreed to leave the
country. Lastly, on January 6, 1535, Pizarro had
founded as the capital of Peru the city of Lima.

But to seize the thread of our story. On the
execution of Atahualpa, Pizarro found that while
a captive Inca might be an embarrassment, no
Inca at all would be a greater embarrassment still.
He thereupon promptly filled the place of the
dead Inca by naming as his successor one of
Atahualpa’s brothers, Toparca. On the way to
Cuzco Toparca died, and a brother to the mur-
dered Huascar — called Manco Inca — coming
forth to greet Pizarro with professions of loyalty,
was accepted as Inca and received the borla.
Manco Inca, with studied Indian craft, disarmed
Spanish caution and laid deep and secret plans.

In 1536 Hernando Pizarro commanded in Cuzco,
where were also his brothers, Juan and Gon-
zalo; and, though by this time Manco Inca had in
a measure betrayed his hand, Hernando in his
chivalrous way treated him with confidence. On
the 18th of April, Manco, in company with his
chief medicine-man, who had left Almagro, quietly
departed from Cuzco, on a pretext of visiting the

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

203

burial-place of Huayna Ccapac, and once beyond
Pizarro’s reach summoned in council the caciques
and war captains of Peru. “I am resolved,”
declared the Inca, “to rid this land of every Chris-
tian, and shall first lay siege to Cuzco.” Then,
ordering to be brought two large golden vessels full
of wine, “let such as are with me,” he exclaimed,
“pledge themselves herein to the death!”

The fight for Cuzco centered around the huge
fortress of Sacsahuaman. This, at first, the In-
dians were able to seize and hold by setting on fire
the combustible thatched roofs of the town and so
forcing the Spaniards to huddle together in the
plaza. But after a week of mingled struggle and
endurance the fortress was scaled and captured.
Its last defender was a Peruvian of giant size and
prowess, one of the war chiefs who had pledged
himself in the wine. This hero, seeing all was lost,
“sprinkled dust upon his head toward heaven,”
then cast himself down upon the foe and so
perished.

While Hernando Pizarro was defending Cuzco,
his brother the Conqueror was at Lima, his new
capital. Here he was besieged; but the country
being level, he was able to beat off the enemies by
the aid of his horsemen. His great concern was

204

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Cuzco. Thither he dispatched what aid he could,
but with ill success, for the party was intercepted
and the severed heads of divers of them were
thrown at Hernando’s feet. But he did more. He
appealed for aid to the entire world of Spanish
America — to Panama, to Nicaragua, to Guate-
mala, to New Spain, and to Espanola. That is to
say, he appealed among others to Pedro de Al-
varado and to Hernan Cortes; and by Cortes at
least aid was sent.

In the struggle for Cuzco, Indian warfare was
exhibited to Europeans on a scale hitherto un-
paralleled. Not alone were there warriors in count-
less masses. Such had there been in Mexico. Not
alone were there tossing crests, waving banners,
and panoplies of featherwork. Such had there
been in Mexico. Not alone were there forests of
long lances and battle-axes edged with copper.
Such things, or similar, had there been in Mexico.
But there was displayed something besides —
something which in Mexico had not been quite the
same — to wit, real military intelligence. Though
in general softer of fiber than the Aztec, both
intellectually and physically, the Peruvian some-
times outdid the Aztec in wit. To the Peruvian,
for example, the “white stranger” was less a

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

205

preternatural being than to the Aztec. The for-
mer, too, feared the horse somewhat less. It is
even said by Herrera that, so accustomed to the
horse had the Peruvian become by the time of the
struggle for Cuzco that he was occasionally to be
seen on horseback himself, a statement which Sir
Arthur Helps distinctly challenges.

But the circumstances most significant for us
in the Cuzco battles — battles hotly contested, for
in one of them Juan Pizarro was killed — are the
skill, the valor, the caution, the perseverance, and
the knightly bearing of Hernando Pizarro. This
capable leadership, especially in its knightly as-
pect, appears to an even higher degree, however,
in the contest next to arise, one in which the Peru-
vian forces were divided between warring factions
of the invading Spaniards.

It was 1537, and Almagro was back from Chile.
Weary, starved, frost-bitten, sun-blistered, dis-
illusioned, and disgusted, he had returned. No
more chasing of will-o’-the-wisps for him! Cuzco
fell within his province! He knew it, so Cuzco
he would have! Seeking but failing to make
friends with Manco Inca, who lay with a strong
force outside the city, Almagro overthrew him in

206 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

fight, and, disregarding an armistice with Her-
nando Pizarro for an adjustment of boundaries
by “pilots,” on the stormy night of the 8th of
April he stole into Cuzco and, surprising Her-
nando and Gonzalo Pizarro in their beds, prompt-
ly seized them and imprisoned them in the Temple
of the Sun.

The feud long maturing between the partners
Pizarro and Almagro was now squarely at issue.
First, Almagro defeated Pizarro’s lieutenant, Alon-
so de Alvarado, and thereby made his tenancy of
Cuzco secure. Next, Gaspar de Espinosa, Luque’s
successor in the partnership, arriving from Pana-
ma, sought to reconcile Almagro with Pizarro, but
died in the midst of his efforts. Then Almagro,
becoming aware of Pizarro’s increasing force, con-
sented to arbitration. Over this the partners met,
embraced one another, and wept. There had in
the past been many meetings of reconciliation be-
tween Pizarro and Almagro, and at all of them
tears had been freely shed. Once the partners
had even had recourse to the Church, and had
divided between them the Host. Nor were these
meetings all mere fustian and hypocrisy. Not at
any rate with Almagro. Old, ugly, scarred, and of
inferior physique, he was at the same time capable

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

207

of feeling and of manifesting the profoundest
generosity.

Despite tears and embraces, the arbitration had
not succeeded; but a treaty was made whereby
Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro were set at liberty
on stipulation that the question of Cuzco be left
to the King and that Hernando Pizarro leave Peru
within six weeks. Then suddenly there developed
a further phase in the Pizarro-Almagro feud.
Hardly had the treaty been concluded when a
messenger from Spain brought word that each
partner was to retain what he had already con-
quered and peopled. Both hereupon claimed to
have conquered Cuzco; and Pizarro, having the
stronger following, declared the treaty annulled
and prepared for battle.

The principal commanders on the side of Pizarro,
who had himself withdrawn to Lima on account of
his years, were Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro,
Alonso de Alvarado, and Pedro de Valdivia. On
the side of Almagro, they were Almagro himself,
too much incapacitated to fight but watching the
field from afar in a litter; Pedro de Lerma, a
deserter from Pizarro; and above all Rodrigo de
Organez, a doughty, implacable soldier trained
under the Constable of Bourbon. As for the forces.

208 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

they were nearly equal: on Pizarro’s side, some
six hundred and fifty men; and on Almagro’s, six
hundred and eighty; whereof about two hundred
and eighty and three hundred, respectively, were
horsemen.

Battle was joined on April 6, 1538, a short way
out of Cuzco on the Plains of Salinas, and by the
encounter that took place such cavaliers as Her-
nando Pizarro, Rodrigo de Organez, and Pedro de
Lerma must have been reminded of combats in
the Old World. One circumstance, however, ren-
dered it peculiarly a New World combat. Al-
magro’s men, divers of them, wore corslets, mori-
ons, and arm-pieces hammered out of silver. By
doubling the quantity of silver used, as compared
with iron, they succeeded in producing, so they
said, an armor as strong as that forged at Milan.
In any event, it was as pretty a melee of knights,
gentlemen, and foot-soldiers as one might wish to
see; for not only were there skill and prowess, but,
as occurs not seldom in partnership readjustments,
a becoming amount of deadly animosity.

But, more particularly, what of Hernando
Pizarro? “A veray parfit gentil knight” Her-
nando was and, as such, careful of his appearance.
Over his corslet he wore a surcoat of orange

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 209

damask. Fastened to this was the Cross of the Or-
der of Santiago given him by the King; and above
his morion floated a tall white plume. These em-
bellishments looked well, but there was more to
them than that. Being a true Sir Knight, he had
wrongs to avenge, and he wished his enemies to be
able to distinguish him easily in the press and to
have every opportunity to encounter him. At one
point only was he at a disadvantage and a bit of
a Don Quixote. He was not handsome. He was
tall, which was well; but his lips hung heavy, and
his nose was bulbous and red at the end.

The challenge of the flame-colored surcoat and
white plume did not pass unheeded. Pedro de
Lerma spurred against Pizarro, with whom his
relations were peculiarly strained* and Pizarro
spurred against Lerma. The lance of Lerma took
effect chiefly upon Pizarro’s horse, forcing him
back on his haunches and unseating the rider, while
Pizarro’s lance pierced his adversary’s thigh. In-
deed this special bout was a kind of Ivanhoe and
Brian de Bois-Guilbert affair, for neither combat-
ant quite overcame the other; and the unhorsed
knight, springing erect, drew his sword to try
conclusions on foot.

Organez meanwhile, grim and sinister, was

14

210 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

himself seeking Pizarro. His training had been in a
harsh school which believed that “dead men do not
bite, ” and when Hernando was in Almagro’s power,
Orgaflez had urgently advised cutting off his head.
Like Richard of Gloucester at Bosworth Field,
Organez at Salinas would seem to have been
haunted by a presentiment that he was doomed to
die. First, though, he would kill the usurper Pi-
zarro. His rushes therefore were headlong and
fierce. One cavalier whom, from a bright surcoat,
he thought to be Hernando, he charged and ran
through. Another he likewise pierced with his
lance; and a third he cut down with his sword.
Then, wounded in the head by a chain-shot, and
his horse being down, he yielded to numbers. His
sword he delivered up to one of Pizarro’s squires,
a cowardly fellow who stabbed his helpless prisoner
to the heart.

Throughout the battle, the hills about the Plains
of Salinas were covered by onlooking Indians,
auxiliaries of Almagro; but they merely looked on
and wondered and took no part. The more the
Spaniards slaughtered one another, the greater the
gain to the natives. And, considering the numbers
engaged, the slaughter was great. In less than tw'o
hours, more than one hundred and fifty knights

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

211

and foot-soldiers were killed outright. Lerma
received seventeen wounds and escaped, only to be
murdered in his bed after the battle. Then came
Almagro’s turn — not that he was immediately
made way with, but was put in prison and treated
with consideration. In connection with his im-
prisonment severe criticism has been visited upon
Hernando Pizarro. In Cuzco there were many
Almagrists, and, so long as their leader lived, peril
to the stability of the Pizarro regime was imminent.
Plots for the prisoner’s liberation were rife. Under
these circumstances Hernando Pizarro, disregard-
ing tears, pleas for mercy, and reminders of how
his own life had been spared by Almagro, permitted
the latter to be condemned to death. Whether in
so doing Hernando was actuated by a sense of
duty or was simply displaying something of Span-
ish primitivism, a quality so conspicuous in Pe-
drarias, is a question. On July 8, 1538, Diego de
Almagro was strangled in prison, and the next day
the body was shown in the plaza with the head
cut off.

Almagro, dead, was now more his partner’s
“ master ” than he had been when alive. Hernando
Pizarro sailed in 1539 for Spain to explain matters

212

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

to the King. He was, however, anticipated by a
friend of the dead partner, Diego de Alvarado, and
was coldly received. Alvarado on his part chal-
lenged Hernando to mortal combat but died before
the ordeal of battle could be essayed. Yet Her-
nando Pizarro did not escape punishment for the
death of Almagro but was shut up in the fortress of
Medina del Campo, where he was kept a prisoner
for twenty years.

On leaving Peru, Hernando Pizarro had cau-
tioned his brother the Conqueror, to “beware the
men of Chile, ” the Almagrists. They formed a
distinct element both in Cuzco and in Lima, and
at the latter place under the leadership of Juan de
Rada, the one-time follower of Cortes, dreamed and
conspired against the Conqueror’s life. Finally,
on June 26, 1541, their plottings bore fruit. On
that day at noon, to the number of eighteen or
twenty, they surprised Pizarro in the government
house and slew him in cold blood. With the Con-
queror at the time were several persons, notably
his brother Martin of Alcantara, the least promi-
nent of the family, but like all of them valiant and
a good swordsman. The onset of the conspirators
was furious. Pizarro was not able so much as to
secure the door against them or to put on his

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS

213

corslet. Martin fought desperately but was soon
cut down. Thereupon Pizarro, wrapping his left
arm in his cloak, seized his sword and did bloody
execution; but at length, receiving a thrust in the
neck, he fell to the floor. “Jesu!” exclaimed the
fallen Conqueror, and, tracing on the floor a cross
in his own blood, he bent to kiss it and so died.

Of the four brothers of Pizarro, two were now
dead and one was in permanent confinement in
Spain. There was left in Peru Gonzalo Pizarro
only. His career, like that of the Conqueror, was
chequered. In 1540, in obedience to orders, he had
made exploration from the Andes eastward. On
this expedition one of his lieutenants, Francisco de
Orellana, sailed down a stream traversing a coun-
try where “the women fought by the side of their
husbands,” a country of Amazons, and at length
passed into the Atlantic Ocean. In 1544 Gonzalo
Pizarro made himself Governor of Peru. He as-
pired, it is said, to become its absolute ruler and
lord; and had he but heeded the counsel of his
master of the camp, Francisco de Carvajal, he
might have succeeded. As it was, in April, 1548,
he was defeated in battle by forces of the Crown
and was beheaded. The same year in which

214

THE SPANISH CONQUERORS

Gonzalo Pizarro had gone eastward from Quito, an-
other explorer, Pedro de Valdivia, had gone south-
ward into Chile; and here, on September 3, 1544,
he founded the city of Valparaiso. In 1547 Valdi-
via returned to Peru and was instrumental in
bringing defeat on Gonzalo Pizarro.

With regard to the Almagrist party, on the exe-
cution of their leader, they set up his natural son
Diego as Governor, but he was pronounced a rebel
by the Crown, and in 1542, after the death of his
able supporter, Juan de Rada, was overthrown in
battle, captured, and put to death. In this con-
flict our old acquaintance Pedro de Candia was
Almagro’s artillerist, but, falling under suspicion of
treachery, was ridden down and killed by Almagro
himself.

From among the interesting figures in Peru
under the Pizarro regime, there remains to be
accounted for only the Inca Manco. Not long
after his defeat by Almagro, he took refuge in a
fastness of the Andes. The spot, it is thought, was
the Megalithic town of Machu Picchu, whence the
Incas had sprung. Here with his concubines, the
Virgins of the Sun, he kept court, receiving and
succoring outlawed Spaniards, beings no longer
regarded by any Indian as preternatural. Here,

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 215

too, about 1544, he died — struck down, it is said,
at a game of bowls by a Spaniard with whom he
had an altercation.

After 1545, zeal for conquest in America on the
part of Spain tended perceptibly to die down. As
early as 1535, well within the lifetime of Cortes,
who did not die till 1547, a Viceroy had been
sent to Mexico. One was sent to Peru in 1543.
With these appointments, government in Spanish-
America gradually became more stable. Vast now,
seemingly, was the interval since the day when,
responding to the lure of Antiilia, of Cipangu, and
of the Cathay of Marco Polo, Columbus had set
sail from Palos for

The land where the sunsets go.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

West and East

Of the region of the West — the Atlantic Ocean or Sea
of Darkness — John Fiske, The Discovery of America,
2 vols. (1899), presents a fascinating account; and carto-
graphical points are considered in great detail by Justin
Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols.
(1884-1889), vols. i and n, and Christopher Columbus
(1891). The subject of Mythical Islands in the Atlan-
tic, a subject of growing importance, is interestingly
treated by Sir Clements R. Markham, Life of Christo-
pher Columbus (1892), but its bearing on the discovery
of America is best brought out in two magazine articles
of recent date: one by William II. Babcock ( Scottish
Geographical Magazine, vols. xxxi and xxxn, 1915-
1916), and the other by Thomas J. Westropp, Brazil and
the Legendary Isles of North America ( Proceedings of the
Royal Irish Academy, 1912).

The above-cited discussions are apart from the ques-
tion of the Northmen in America, for, while the North-
men no doubt discovered parts of North America at a
very early date, these discoveries had no bearing on the
discovery by Columbus. The pre-Columbian discover-
ies (or discoveries by the Northmen) may be found well

217

218

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

set forth by Julius E. Olson, The Northmen, Columbus ,
and Cabot ( Original Narratives of Early American His-
tory, 1906), where authorities are given.

As regards the East — Asia and India before Colum-
bus — Sir Henry Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 2
vols. (3d ed. revised by Henri Cordier, 1908), and Yule,
Cathay and the Way Thither, 4 vols. (revised by Cordier,
Hakluyt Society Pubs., 1916), and R. H. Major, vol.
xxii, India in the Fifteenth Century {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs.,
1857) are fundamental. The same subject is more
briefly treated by Cheyney, The European Background
of American History (1904), and by John Fiske, The
Discovery of America. Voyages to the East by the Por-
tuguese are entertainingly described by R. H. Major,
Life of Prince Henry of Portugal (1868).

Columbus

Authoritative lives of Columbus in English are few.
The best known is by Washington Irving, Life and
Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 2 vols. (1828-1831).
Based on original sources, this charming narrative, once
authoritative, is now to a great degree superseded. The
best life for the modern general reader is probably that
by Sir Clements R. Markham, Life of Christopher
Columbus (1892). John Fiske, The Discovery of America,
presents a highly sympathetic portrait of Columbus.
Beginning with 1884 lives of Columbus have been less
sympathetic in form and more critical. In that year
Henry Harrisse published Christophe Colornb, 2 vols.
This has not been translated, but in 1892 was followed
by his Discovery of North America, in three parts, a work
in English. Following this appeared in English a still

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

219

more critical estimate of Columbus by Henry Vignaud,
Toscanelli and Columbus (1902). Then came Vignaud’s
Etudes critiques sur la vie de Colomb (1905) and Histoire
critique de la grande entreprise de Christophe Colomb, 2
vols. (1911). The views of Mr. Harrisse are strongly
reflected by Justin Winsor, Christopher Columbus (1892).
Influenced by the views of Mr. Harrisse and of Mr.
Vignaud, Filson Young published in 1906 Christopher
Columbus and the New World of his Discovery, 2 vols.
(3d ed., 1912), a narrative written in popular style. To
this is appended a valuable note by the Earl of Dunraven
on the seamanship of Columbus’s first voyage.

But there have not been wanting writers to combat
the iconoclasm of the critical lives of Columbus, as for
example: John Boyd Thacher, Christopher Columbus,
3 vols. (1903-1904); Henry P. Biggar, The New Colum-
bus ( Report of the American Historical Association, 1912).
Valuable critical estimates of the opinions of Vignaud
and Thacher may be found expressed by Edward Gay-
lord Bourne in the American Historical Review, vol.
viii, 1903; vol. ix, 1904; vol. x, 1904; and in his Spain
in America ( The American Nation Series, 1904). Mr.
Vignaud himself ( American Historical Review, vol.
xvm, 1913) discusses claims made in certain quarters
that Columbus was a Jew and in other quarters that he
was a Spaniard. A vivid presentation of Columbus
from an Italian source is contained in an article by
Cesare de Lollis in the French Revue des Revues, Janu-
ary 15, 1898.

As bearing upon the early years of the life of Co-
lumbus, there is a valuable essay by Ravenstein,
Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (1908). This
work is especially noteworthy for a beautiful and

220

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

accurate reproduction in colors of the gores of Be-
haim’s globe, showing geographical conditions as con-
ceived by Behaim in 1492, prior to Columbus’s first
voyage.

Source materials for the life of Columbus are exten-
sive, but are largely in foreign tongues. The Life of
Columbus , by Ferdinand Columbus, his son, may be
found in English in Churchill, Voyages (1744-1746) and
in Pinkerton, Voyages (1808-1814). Thacher’s Chris-
topher Columbus contains excellent translations of much
early material, such as the earliest sketches of the life of
Columbus by contemporaries: Las Casas’s account of
the discovery of America and of Columbus’s third
voyage; and excerpts from the Epistles of Peter Martyr
on the discovery. Peter Martyr’s Decades, translated
by Richard Eden, 1555, and Michael Lok — highly
entertaining — is accessible in Hakluyt, Voyages (vol.
v, edition of 1812), and in De Orbe Novo, well translated
by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 2 vols. (1912). Colum-
bus’s own letters, several of the most important, are
printed in English by R. H. Major, Select Letters of
Columbus (2d ed., 1890). Columbus’s journal of his
first voyage was printed in English by Sir Clements R.
Markham, Journal of Columbus (1893); but a new and
more literal translation is furnished by Thacher in his
life of Columbus. By far the best account in English
of Columbus’s four voyages is that in the collection of
documents edited by E. G. Bourne and printed in The
Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot ( Original Narratives of
Early American History, 1906). In 1894 the Ameri-
can Historical Association printed in translation a
number of the private letters of Columbus in its Annual
Report.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 221

Balboa and the Pacific

For the voyages secondary to those of Columbus, the
best authorities are the following: Irving, Voyages of the
Companions of Columbus (1831), printed with Irving’s
Life of Columbus; Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Con-
quest in America (4 vols., 1855-1861, new edition with
notes by M. Oppenheim, 4 vols., 1904), and H. H.
Bancroft, History of Central America, 2 vols. (1882-
1887). The voyages of Ojeda and Nicuesa, involving
Balboa, are covered by the authorities just cited. Peter
Martyr’s Decades contains an admirable sketch of Bal-
boa and his discovery of the Pacific Ocean. The latest
and most authoritative account (especially as to chro-
nology) is, however, in Spanish by the Chilean scholar,
J. T. Medina, El Descubrimiento del Oceano Pacifico.

Naming of America

Vespucci and the naming of America has given rise to
much discussion. John Fiske, following the Brazilian
scholar Varnhagen, treats the subject controversially
in The Discovery of America. His views are critically
reviewed by E. G. Bourne in his Spain in America.
The latest treatment (one favorable to Vespucci) is by
Vignaud, Americ Vespuce (1^51-1512) (1917), a work
in French. It is Mr. Vignaud ’s thesis that not only did
Vespucci anticipate Columbus in the discovery of the
mainland of America, but that he, first of all explor-
ers and writers, realized that Mundus Novus (South
America) was wholly distinct from Asia, a new con-
tinent and a new world. The letters of Vespucci have
been printed in English by C. R. Markham, Letters of

222

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Amerigo Vespucci ( Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 1894). A more
accurate translation of the earliest letter (the Soderini)
was printed by Quaritch, The First Four Voyages of
Amerigo Vespucci (1893); but by far the best transla-
tion is by George Tyler Northup, Vespucci Reprints,
Texts and Studies, vol. iy, 1916.

Magellan

The epoch-making voyage of Magellan may be
studied in the contemporary account of Antonio Piga-
fetta, Magellan's Voyage Round the World, translated
by James A. Robertson, 2 vols. and index volume (1906).
Brief accounts are given by John Fiske, The Discovery of
America, and by E. G. Bourne, Spain in America. On
the diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portu-
gal regarding fields for discovery, see Thacher, Colum-
bus, vol. ii, and Bourne, in his Historical Introduction
to The Philippine Islands (edited by Blair and Robert-
son), vol. i (1903).

Mexico

Basic accounts in English for the conquest of Mexico
are: The Letters of CorUs (complete) translated and
edited by F. A. MacNutt, 2 vols. (1908); Bernal Diaz,
The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, translated
by A. P. Maudslay, 5 vols. ( Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 1908-
1916); and The Narrative of the Anonymous Conqueror,
translated by Marshall H. Saville (Cortes Society, 1917).
Besides the foregoing, there exist histories of the con-
quest such as W. H. Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico,
3 vols. (1843), a delightful narrative but in parts highly
uncritical; and Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest
in America, a narrative quite as readable as Prescott’s

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

223

and less uncritical. A good history is by H. H. Ban-
croft, History of Mexico, 5 vols. (1883-1887). The
latest biography of Cortes in English is by F. A. Mac-
Nutt, Fernando Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico
{. Heroes of the Nations Series ), 1909.

Mexican archeology — including the subject of Aztec
civilization — is dealt with in a multitude of publica-
tions. Into this great field John Fiske, The Discovery
of America, may be accepted as the best popular guide.
But see also Lewis Spence, The Civilization of Ancient
Mexico (1912). Works more special in character are:
Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (1877), and Houses
and House Life of the American Aborigines (1881) ; A. F.
Bandelier, Art of War of the Ancient Mexicans (1877),
Tenure of Lands of the Ancient Mexicans (1878), The
Social Organization of the Ancient Mexicans (1879), An
Archaeological Tour in Mexico (1884). A serviceable
compendium is T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, 1914.

Central America

The history of Central America is based largely on
two sources: Pascual de Andagoya, Narrative of the
Proceedings of Pedrarias Davila, translated and edited
by Sir Clements R. Markham {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs.,
1865) ; and The Letters of Cortis, translated and edited
by F. A. MacNutt, 2 vols. (1908). To these accounts
may be added Bernal Diaz, True History of the Conquest
of Mexico, translated by Maudslay, 5 vols. {Hakluyt
Soc. Pubs., 1908-1916), which contains an account of
the Yucatan expedition of Cortes. A recent useful book
on Yucatan is Philip Ainsworth Means, History of the
Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas, Peabody
Museum Papers, vol. vn (1917).

224

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Peru

Peru on the historical side has not been neglected by
investigators. The conquest is described by Pizarro’s
two secretaries and by Hernando Pizarro: Reports on
the Discovery of Peru, translated and edited by Sir
Clements R. Markham ( Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 1872).
The report by Secretary Pedro Sancho has lately been
retranslated by Philip Ainsworth Means and published
by the Cortes Society, 1917. A readable account is by
Sir C. R. Markham (Winsor, Narrative and Critical
History of America, vol. ii). The story of the Incas
themselves is told by Markham, The Incas of Peru
(1910). John Fiske contrasts the Peruvian and Aztec
civilizations in The Discovery of America; and Peruvian
chronology is studied by P. A. Means, Culture Sequence
in the Andean Area {Proceedings of the Nineteenth Con-
gress of Americanists, 1917). This article is followed,
in the same publication, by an excellent general survey
of Inca Culture by Hiram Bingham of Yale University.
W. H. Prescott, A History of the Conquest of Peru, 2 vols.
(1847), is still a good work; and Sir Arthur Helps, The
Spanish Conquest in America, is excellent in its account
of Peru. It departs from Prescott in the view presented
of Hernando Pizarro.

General

For additional titles, see the bibliographical references
appended to the articles on Central America, Mexico,
Peru, and South America, as well as those on Balboa,
Cortts, Columbus, and Magellan , in The Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 11th Edition.

INDEX

Acachinanco, Montezuma meets
Cortes at, 129

Acla, 87, 88, 142; founded, 84

Aconcagua, Andean peak, 161

Africa, Behaim journeys to, 22;
Columbus’s voyage to, 22,
36; on Behaim’s globe, 12, 23

Agriculture, Peruvian, 164-65

Aguilar, Geronimo de, 92, 104,
106, 136

Ailly, Pierre d’. Imago Mundi,
23, 35 (note), 36

Alaminos, pilot of Grijalva ex-
pedition, 96

Alcantara, Martin of, 168, 212-

213

Alfonso V of Portugal, 21

Alfraganus the Arabian, 23,
36

Alhambra, 34

Almagro, Diego de, 166; part-
ner of Pizarro, 155, 191; sails
from Panama, 155-56; returns
to Panama, 156, 157, 158;
made Captain of Tumbez,
168; joins Pizarro in Peru, 191
et seq.\ at Cuzco, 198; made
Marshal, 200; grant of land
to, 200-01; contests Pizarro’s
grant, 200-01, 205-11; goes to
Chile, 201; defeats Alvarado,
202; returns from Chile, 205;
forces of, 207-08; imprison-
ment and death, 211; avenged,
211-12

Almagro, Diego de, son of Diego,

214

Alvarado, Alonso de, 206, 207

Alvarado, Diego de, 212
Alvarado, Pedro de, on Grijalva
expedition, 96, 98; with Cor-
tes, 103, 133, 135, 136; sent to
Guatemala, 147-48; personal
characteristics, 147; plans to
complete work of Balboa, 148-
149; against Quito, 201-02;
Pizarro appeals to, 204
Amadis of Gaul, 1, 199
Amazon River, 160
America, voyages of Columbus
to, 39-58; naming of, 66;
bibliography of name, 221-
222; Tierra Firme, 69; Ma-
gellan’s discoveries, 78; see
also Central America, South
America

Anan, province of Cuba, 54
Andagoya, Pascual de, 143
Andes, The, 160, 161, 173, 174,
191, 192

Antarctic Current, 160
Antigua, 145; see also Santa
Maria la Antigua
Antilles, The, 63, 68, 93-94; see
also Cuba, Espanola, West
Indies

Antiilia, Island of, 3, 12, 20, 24,
25 (note), 43, 49, 63, 215
Arabia, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 8
Arbolancha, Pedro de, reports
Balboa’s discovery, 79, 83
Archeology, 146-47, 162, 196
Arco, Domimguez do, 21
Argiiello, Fernando de, 88, 89
Arias de Avila, Pedro, see Pe-
drarias

IS

225

220

INDEX

Aristotle, quoted, 11-12; author-
ity of Behaim, 23
Ascasmayu River, 160
Asia, early missionaries to, 5;
aim of Columbus to reach,
22, 24, 25 (note), 35 (note),
41, 46, 55, 57-58, 78 (note);
Behaim’s westward journey to
find, 24; Cuba identified as,
47, 53, 56; America thought
subsidiary to, 78; see also
Cathay, Cipangu
Atahualpa, brother of Huascar,
Inca of Peru, 170, 171, 185,
193-94; ruler of Quito, 171;
and Pizarro, 171, 174, 175 et
seq.; appearance, 175; and
Christianity, 181-82, 194;

capture of, 183; ransom, 185-
190; trial, 194; execution, 195,
202

Atlantic Ocean, 2, 6; mythical
islands of, 3-4, 6, 20, 24;
bibliography, 217; see also
Mare Tenebrosum
Atrato River, see Darien River
Avila, Pedro Arias de, see Pe-
drarias

Azores, The, 2, 20, 23, 49
Aztecs, send embassies to Cortes,
107-09, 110, 113, 127-28;

religion, 120, 124, 127; art,
121-22; poetry, 122-23; strug-
gle for subsistence, 123-24;
organization, 124; resist Cor-
tes, 137; Cortes takes chiefs
to Honduras, 150; in retinue
of Cortes, 152; extent of
authority, 163; compared to
Quichuas, 163, 166; see also
Cortes, Indians, Mexico-Ten-
ochtitlan, Montezuma, Na-
huas, Totonac Indians

Bagdad, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 8
Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 99,
139, 141-42, 154, 169, 187,
199; accompanies Ojeda, 65,
66, 67; early life, 66; personal

characteristics, 67; prepares
for conquest, 69; use of dogs,
69-70, 75, 104-05; seeks gold
and food, 70-72; alliance with
Careta and Comogre, 70-71;
ordered home by King, 72;
letters to Ferdinand, 73-74,
82-83; crosses Isthmus of
Darien, 74-76; discovers Pa-
cific, 76; returns to West Indies,
78; sends word of discovery to
Ferdinand, 79; .displaced by
Pedrarias, 79, 81; and Pedra-
rias, 81, 82-83, 84-86, 87-90,
139, 140; royal favors, 83-84,
85; builds ships, 86; astrolo-
ger predicts evil to, 86; crisis
in affairs of, 87-89; trial and
execution, 89; compared with
Cortes, 109; bibliography, 221
Balsas River (Sabana?), 86
Banderas, Rio de, 96
Barcelona, Columbus received
by Ferdinand and Isabella in,
50-51

Bastidas, Rodrigo de, 66, 67
Batuta, Ibn, 9, 16; quoted, 9,
10

Bayona, Pinta arrives at, 50
Baza, siege of, 28
“Beccaria” of 1435, 4, 20
Behaim, Martin, 26, 35 (note),
62, 63, 147; globe of 1492, 12,

23- 24, 43; life, 22-23; question
of Columbus’s indebtedness to,

24- 25; Ravenstein’s essay on,
219-20

Belianis, Don, 2

Benalcazar, Sebastian de, 178,

201, 202

“Benincasus” of 1463, 1476, and
1482, 4

Benjamin, Rabbi, 8, 9 (note), 10,
16

Bernal Harbor, 111, 114
Birti, 143, 154; see also Peru
Bobadilla, Francisco de, 57
Bobadilla, Isabel de, wife of
Pedrarias, 80-81, 85, 145

INDEX

227

Botello, Luis, 87, 88, 89
Braga, Archbishop of, Peter
Martyr writes to, 52
Brazil, 63

Brazil, island of, 3, 63

Cabot, Sebastian, 62
Cabral, Pedralvarez, 63
Cabrero, Juan, pleads for Co-
lumbus, 34

Cadiz, second expedition of
Columbus sails from, 80
Caledonia Bay, 74
Caledonia Harbor, 84
Calzada de Iztapalapan, 130
Campeche, Cordoba at, 95, 97,
104

Canaries, The, 2, 20
Candia, Pedro de, 159, 166, 167,
168, 178, 214

Cape Verde Islands, 2, 20,

23

Careta, cacique of Cueva, 70, 85
Cariari (Nicaragua), 58, 92;

see also Nicaragua
Cartagena, 66-67
Carvajal, Francisco de, 213
Castile, Columbus sails for, 49
Castilla del Oro, 65, 68, 101
Castillo, Bernal Diaz del, see
Diaz, Bernal
“Catalan” of 1375, 4
Cathay, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 23, 24,
46, 47, 49, 58, 99, 187, 215
Catoche, Point, 95, 96
Causeways at Mexico-Tenoch-
titlan, 117

Caxamarca, Atahualpa conquers,
170; Pizarro at, 172, 174-95;
description of, 177-78; Ata-
hualpa in, 178-95
Cempoalla, settlement of Toto-
nac Indians, 110; Cortes at,
111-14, 133; description of,
111-12; people’s idea of Span-
iards, 128

Central America, 58, 69; bibli-
ography, 223, 224; see also
America, Darien, Guatemala,

Honduras, Panama, Tierra
Firme, Yucatan
Cervantes, Miguel de, 2
Chaleo, Lake, 116, 117, 125
Challcuchima, one of Atahual-
pa’s captains, 195
Champoton, Cordoba lands at,
95

Chapultepec, 117
Charles V of Spain, 110, 152,
168

Charles VIII of France, 29
Charts and maps, early marine
charts, 4, 20; Behaim’s globe
of 1492, 12, 23-24, 43; Bar-
tholomew Columbus limns ma-
rine, 18, 28; of Bartholomew
Perestrello, 18-19; Toscanelli’s
chart, 25 (note); Columbus
limns marine, 28; Pinzon en-
trusts map from Rome to
Columbus, 31, 42; Columbus
compiles chart, 31-32; Co-
lumbus sees world maps, 47;
Fra Mauro’s map of 1457-59,
47

Chicama, 156

Chile, Inca dominion in, 170;
Almagro’s trip to, 201, 205;
Almagrists of, 212
Chimborazo, volcanic peak, 167
China, 5, 8; see also Cathay
Chios, Island of, Columbus goes
to, 16, 36

Chiriqui Indians, 143
Cholula, 125, 128
Cipango, see Cipangu
Cipangu (Japan), 6, 12, 22, 24,
42, 46, 47, 49, 58, 99, 187,
215

Columbus, Bartholomew, broth-
er of Christopher, 15; in Lisbon,
18; enlists aid of England and
France for Christopher, 29;
arrested by Bobadilla, 57; on
fourth voyage of Columbus,
57; use of dogs by, 69-70
Columbus, Bianchinetta, sister of
Christopher, 15

228

INDEX

Columbus, Christopher, 99, 115,
189, 147, 215; personal char-
acteristics, 13-14, 60-61; fam-
ily of, 15; born at Genoa, 15;
education, 15; writes Bank of
St. George, 15, 57; early life,
16; early voyages, 16-18, 19-
20, 36; marriage, 18; tradi-
tions as to interest in West, 18-
19; Journal, 21, 36, 37, 41, 44,
46-47, 54-55, 56; audiences
with King of Portugal, 21-22,
49-50; aim of, 22, 24, 25

(note), 35 (note), 41, 45-46,
55, 57-58, 78 (note); indebted-
ness to Behaim, 24-25; at
Palos, 25-26, 29-32, 50; life in
Spain, 25 et seq., 58-59; inter-
ests Duke of Medina Coeli, 26;
audiences with Ferdinand and
Isabella, 26, 32-33, 51; Tala-
vera’s council, 27, 32-33;

relations with Beatrix Enri-
quez, 28, 34, 39, 59; interviews
pilots, 30-31; and Pinzon,
30-32, 35 (note), 37-38, 42-
43, 48; second council dis-
cusses plan of, 32-33; demands
of, 33; causes for derision of,
33; demands granted, 34; Ca-
pitulation and Letters Patent
issued to, 35 (note); nautical
skill, 36; recruits secured, 38,
42; ships, 38; personnel of
expedition, 39; sets sail, 39-40;
first voyage, 40-41, 42-44;
landing, 44-45; discovers Cuba
and Hayti, 45; search for
mainland, 47; identifies islands
as Asia, 47, 53, 56; builds
fortress, 48; sails for Spain,
48; homeward voyage, 49;
places parchment in barrel, 49;
receives letter from sovereigns,
50; trophies, 51, 55; letters of,
53, 56-57, 61-62; superstitions
and tales of, 54-55; second
voyage, 55; discovers Porto
Rico and Jamaica, 55; founds

Isabella, 56; third voyage, 56-
57, 90, 99; discovers mainland
of America, 56; arrested and
sent to Spain, 57; fourth voy-
age, 57-58; makes will, 57, 58-
59; death (1506), 59; estimate
of, 59-62; idea of America, 78;
contact with Maya civili-
zation, 92-93; and Cuba, 94;
bibliography, 218-20

Columbus, Diego, son of Christo-
pher, 59; born (1480 or 1481),
18; at Palos, 25, 29; brought
to Cordova, 34, 39; Governor
of Antilles, 68, 94, 101, 102;
Balboa solicits aid from, 69,
71, 72, 91

Columbus, Diego, brother of
Christopher, 15, 55, 57

Columbus, Felipa, wife of Christo-
pher, 18, 25, 28

Columbus, Ferdinand, son of
Christopher, 34, 39; quoted,
17, 60; born (1488), 28; account
of voyage of Columbus, 43;
shares fourth voyage of Co-
lumbus, 57

Columbus, Giovanni, brother of
Christopher, 15

Columbus, William, of Case-
neuve, see William of Case-
neuve

Comogre, cacique in Darien, 70,
71

Constantinople, Rabbi Benjamin
visits, 8

Conti, Nicolo de, 9 (note)

Copan, ruins of, 146

Cordoba, Francisco Hernandez
de, in Cuba, 94; expedition of,
95, 97, 99, 104; sent to Nica-
ragua, 143; treachery and
death, 144

Cordoba, Gonsalvo de, 80, 100

Cordova, Columbus at, 26-29;
sends son Diego to, 34, 39

Cortes, Hernan, 65, 78, 80, 99,
187, 199; finds Guerrero and
Aguilar, 92, 104; in Cuba, 94,

INDEX

229

Cortes, Hernan — Continued
101; born (1485), 100; early
life, 100; personal traits, 100,
101; marries, 101; alcalde at
Santiago de Cuba, 101 ; appear-
ance, 101 ; leader of expedition,
101-02; preparations, 102; dis-
trusted by Governor, 102, 103;
sails from Santiago, 103; com-
panions and outfit, 103; “New
Spain,” 104; at Tabasco, 104-
106, 150; at San Juan de Ulua,
106-10, 167; embassies sent by
Aztecs to, 107-09, 110, 113,
127-28; and Montezuma, 106,
108, 109, 113, 115, 126, 129-32,
134, 171, 172, 177, 183; opposes
Velasquez, 109, 133, 149; sinks
his ships, 110, 114; plans new
basis for expedition, 110;
and Totonac Indians, 110-14;
in Cempoalla, 111-14, 133;
missionary zeal, 114, 133;

at Mexico-Tenochtitlan, 125,
129-37; trouble with Aztecs,
132-37; Narvaez against, 133;
losses of, 135; final victory, 137-
138; south of Mexico, 145, 146,
147, 148, 149-51, 154; treach-
ery of Olid, 149; returns to
Mexico, 151-52; to Spain
(1528), 152; marriage, 153;
receives royal favors, 153;
sends aid to Pizarro, 204;
death (1547), 215

Costa Rica, 84

Cotopaxi, volcanic peak, 167

Coyohuacan, Aztec settlement,
129, 133

Cozumel (Island of Swallows),
96, 103

Cuba, 54; discovered, 45; Co-
lumbus identifies as Asia, 47,
53, 56; Balboa obtains sup-
plies from, 85; Velasquez Gov-
ernor of, 94; Cordoba and
Grijalva expeditions from, 95-
98; Cortes expedition from,
98-99, 103

Cueva, district of Darien, 70;
Balboa made Captain-General
of, 84

Cuitlahuatzin, Aztec chief, 125,
134, 137, 138

Cuitlalpitoc, cacique, servant of
Montezuma, 107
Culua, see Ulua

Cuzco, Inca in Peru, 170; see
also Huascar, Huayna Cca-
pac

Cuzco, capital of the Incas, 162,
165; Alvarado hears of, 148;
Ruiz learns of, 157; road
connects Quito and, 173;
treasure from, 188, 198; Pi-
zarro goes to, 190-91, 192, 193,
195-98; description of, 195-
196; shrine of the Sun at, 196-
197 ; Almagro claims, 201, 205-
211; Hernando Pizarro com-
mands at, 202-03; siege of,
203-05; Almagrists in, 211,
212

Cynocephalse, mythical crea-
tures of the East, 6

Dabaiba, cacique in Darien,
72

Damascus, Rabbi Benjamin
visits, 8

Darien, Balboa in, 67, 70 et seq.,
104; cities, 67, 142-43; Nicuesa
brought to, 68; Pedrarias
made Governor of, 79; famine
in, 94; see also Panama
Darien, Isthmus of, see Darien
Darien (Atrato) River, 65
Davila, Gil Gonzalez, see Gon-
zalez Davila, Gil
Davila, Pedrarias, see Pedrarias
De la Cosa, Juan, 39, 64, 67
De Soto, Hernando, see Soto,
Hernando de

Dias, Bartholomeu, Portuguese
captain, 29

Diaz, Bernal, 80, 95; quoted,
105, 111, 112-13, 120, 126
Diego, Juan, of Deza, 34

230

INDEX

Diriangen, cacique in Nicaragua,

141

Dogs, Balboa’s use of, 69-70,
75, 104-05; Bartholomew Co-
lumbus uses, 69-70; Pedrarias
uses, 145
Dulce, Golfo, 151
Dulmo, Fernam, of Terceira, 24,
62-63

Dunraven, Lord, quoted, 44

East, The, tales of, 4-11; mythi-
cal creatures of, 6-8; wealth of,
9-11; bibliography, 218; see
also Cathay, Cipangu, India
Enciso, Martin Fernandez de,
66, 67, 69, 72, 81, 109
England, Columbus in, 17, 36;

Bartholomew Columbus in, 29
Enriquez, Beatrix, 28, 34, 39,
59

Espanola (Hayti), 66; Columbus
discovers, 19, 21, 45; on Be-
haim’s globe, 24; supposed to
be Japan, 47, 58; La Navidad
on, 48, 55-56; Isabella founded
on, 56; chaotic condition in, 57;
letter of Columbus from, 64;
Nicuesa from, 65; Diego Co-
lumbus at, 68, 94 ; Balboa seeks
aid from, 69, 71, 72, 74, 91;
Bartholomew Columbus in, 69-
70; Ovando Governor of, 100;
Pizarro asks aid from, 204
Espinosa, Gaspar de, 84, 89,
142, 143, 206

Esplandidn, The Exploits of, 2
Estreito, Joao Affonso, of Ma-
deira, 24, 26, 62-63
Estremadura (Spain), Balboa
born in, 66; Cortes from, 100;
Pizarro from, 154

Fair God, see Quetzalcoatl
Fayal, an Atlantic island, 22-
23

Fellipillo, interpreter with Pi-
zarro, 181

Ferdinand, King of Spain, and

Balboa, 73-74, 79, 83, 85;
see also Ferdinand and Isa-
bella

Ferdinand and Isabella, King
and Queen of Spain, audiences
to Columbus, 26, 32-33, 51;
grant Capitulation and Let-
ters Patent to Columbus, 35
(note); letter to Columbus, 50;
Columbus’s letter to, 56-57;
see also Ferdinand, Isabella
Fernandina, Isla (Cuba), 98;
see also Cuba

Fiske, John, estimate of Pe-
drarias, 81; quoted, 116
Florida, 95
Fonseca, Bay of, 141
France, Bartholomew Columbus
in, 29

Francis I of France, 190
Francisquillo, dwarf of Diego
Columbus, 102-03
Frontera, Pedro Vasquez de la,
see La Frontera

Gallo, Island of, discovered, 157 ;
Pizarro on, 158, 159, 168,
169

Garabito, Andres, 87-88, 89-
90

Genoa, Rabbi Benjamin visits,
8; controls Mediterranean and
Black Seas, 9 (note); Colum-
bus from, 15, 16

Gold, as lure of East, 10; search
of Columbus for, 46, 99; Bal-
boa’s object, 70, 71; sent to
Cortes by Montezuma, 108-
109, 127-28; Atahualpa’s ran-
som, 185-90; at Cuzco, 198
Golden Chersonese of Ptolemy
(Malay Peninsula), 59, 68,
77, 78, 187

Gomera, one of Canary Islands,
40

Gonzalez Davila, Gil, 139-40,
141, 143-44, 146, 149, 184
Gonzalez, Ruy, of Clavijo, 9
(note)

INDEX

23 1

Good Hope, Cape of, discovered,
29

Gorgona, Island of, 168; Pizarro
on, 159, 166, 169
Gracias a Dios, Cape, 65, 79
Granada, 32, 34

Granada, Archbishop of, letter of
Peter Martyr to, 53
Greytown, 145

Grijalva, Juan de, 199; goes to
Cuba, 94, 98; expedition, 96-
97, 98-99, 126
Grijalva, Rio de, 96, 104
Guanahani (Watling) Island,
43, 44

Guanaja, island of, 92, 149
Guatemala, Cortes and, 146-47;
Maya culture in, 146; Pizarro
asks aid of, 204
Guayaquil, Gulf of, 167
Guerrero, Gonzalo, 92, 104
Guinea, Columbus journeys to,
36

Habana, founded, 94; Olid at,
149

Hayti, see Espafiola
Hand of Satan, Savage Island
called, 3

Helps, Sir Arthur, estimate of
Pedrarias, 81; cited, 155, 205
Henry VII of England, 29
Herrera, Spanish historian,
quoted, 77; cited, 205
Heythum I, King of Lesser
Armenia, 9

Honduras, Andres Nino in, 141;
Nicuesa in, 65; Cortes and,
145, 146, 148, 149-50, 154
Horses, Cortes’s use of, 103, 105,
125, 135; effect on Indians,
105, 113-14, 128, 135, 150-51,
175-76, 205; shod with silver
in Peru, 199

Huascar, Inca of Peru, 171, 185,
193-194; see also Cuzco
Huayua Ccapac, Inca of Peru,
170-71, 203

Huitzilipan, Valley of, 125

Huitzilopochtli, Nahua god of
war, 120, 124, 127
Humboldt Current, see Ant-
arctic Current

Hunger Harbor, see Puerto de la
Hambre

Iceland, Columbus in, 17
Imago Mundi, by Pierre d’Ailly,
23, 35 (note), 36
Incas, origin of, 162; government,
163, 164-65, 170-71; see also
Atahualpa, Cuzco, Huascar,
Montezuma, Peru, Pizarro
India, early travelers in, 5, 6, 8,
9; on Behaim’s globe, 12, 23;
identified with New World
discoveries, 58, 187
Indians, Columbus and, 45, 46,
51, 55; of Darien, 67; Balboa
and, 70-71, 74, 75, 86; rela-
tions with Spaniards, 81-82,
83, 95, 101, 104, 145; human
sacrifices, 97-98; resist Cortes,
104, 105; describe Grijalva’s
expedition, 126; Ruiz meets,
157; attack Pizarro, 195, 201-
205; watch battle at Salinas,
210; see also Aztecs, Chiriqui
Indians, Incas, Mayas, Nahuas,
Totonac Indians
Innocent VIII, Pope, Pinzon
uses library of, 31
Irving, Washington, quoted, 80
Isabella, Queen of Spain, tenders
jewels for Columbus, 35; death
(1504), 58; see also Ferdinand
and Isabella

Isabella, settlement in Hayti, 56
Itzamna, Maya god of the East,
93

Itztapalapan, community of
Mexico, 125, 129, 133, 134,
137

Iztapan, 150

Jamaica, discovered, 55; Colum-
bus writes from, 62; Valdivia
wrecked off, 91

232

INDEX

Januarius, Hannibal, account of
Columbus’s voyage, 51-52, 53-
54

Japan, 25 (note), 43; see also
Cipangu

Jeronimite Fathers, 101
John, Prester, 4, 8
John of Marignolli, Friar, 5;
quoted, 7-8

John of Monte Corvino, Friar, 5
John of Pian de Carpine, Friar,
5

John II of Portugal, 21, 28, 49,
56; quoted, 49-50
Juana, see Cuba

Julian, slave captured by C6r-
doba expedition, 95, 104

Karakorum, 5, 9
King Island, see Reyella
Kinsay, 5, 47

Kish, an island in the Persian
Gulf, 8, 10

Kukulcan, Maya sun god, 93,
120

Labrador, 30

La Cosa, Juan de, 39, 64, 67
La Frontera, Pedro Vasquez de,
30, 31

Land of Darkness, 6
Las Casas, Bartolome de, 80, 94,
98, 101

Las Casas, Francisco de, 144,
149, 150, 184

Las Mugeres, island of (Island of
Women), 95
Leon, Velasquez de, 135
Leon, 145; Pedrarias dies at,
146

Lerma, Pedro de, 207, 208, 209,

211

Levant, Columbus visits the, 36
Lima, founded (1535), 202;

besieged, 203; Pizarro with-
draws to, 207; Almagrists in,
212

Lisbon, Columbus at, 17, 18;
Behaim at, 23

Los Rios, Pedro de, 145, 158
Luque, Fernando de, 155, 156,
158, 168, 191, 206

Machu Picchu, 162, 214
Madeira, island of, Columbus
on, 19

Madeiras, The, 2, 20
Magellan, Fernando, 60, 78;

bibliography, 222
Malabar, 11

Malay Archipelago, 5, 9 (note)
Malay Peninsula, 77; see alss
Golden Chersonese
Maldonado, Dr. Rodrigo de,
27

Mam, Isla de (Man Island), 3
Man de Satanaxio (Hand of
Satan), Savage Island called,
3

Man Island, see Mam, Isla de
Manco Ccapac, traditional Inca
of Peru, 170

Manco Inca, 202, 205, 214-15
Mandeville, Sir John. 23. 59;

Travels, 35 (note)

Mangu Kaan, 9
Maps, see Charts and maps
Mar, Insula in (Island in the
Sea), 3, 20

Mar del Sur, see Pacific Ocean
Maracaibo, Gulf of, 79
Marchena, Antonio de, 25, 29-30,
33

Mare Tenebrosum (Sea of Dark-
ness, Atlantic Ocean), 2, 6, 12;
see also Atlantic Ocean
Maria, Dona, daughter of Pe-
drarias, 85, 87-88
Marina, Dona, interpreter for
Cortes, 105-06, 107, 128, 136,
153

Marinus of Tyre, 23
Matanzas, 94, 97
Maule, River, 160
Mauro’s, Fra, map of 1457-59,
47

Mayas of Yucatan, sacrifice
Valdivia, 92; Columbus and

INDEX

233

92-93; culture and religion,
93, 97, 120, 146; see also In-
dians

Medina Cceli, Duke of, 26
Megalithic period of Peruvian
development, 162, 196, 214
Melchor, slave captured by Cor-
doba expedition, 95, 104
Merchants to the East, 8-11
Mexico, Cortes’s idea of, 78;
conquest of, 90, 91-138;

Central Valley of, 116; topog-
raphy, 159-60; Indian war-
fare in, 204; viceroy sent to,
215; bibliography, 222-23
Mexico City, 117, 123, 147, 152;

see also Mexico-Tenochtitlan
Mexico - Tenochtitlan, 114-15,
115-21, 123-24, 178; Cortes at,
125, 129-37; siege of, 137
Missionaries to the East, 5-8
Moluccas, 6

Montejo, Francisco de. 111
Montezuma, 114-15, 179, 180;
and Cortes, 106, 108, 109, 113,
115, 126, 129-32, 134, 171, 172,
177, 183; sends embassies to
Cortes, 107-09, 110, 113, 127-
128; andTotonacs, 110, 112-13;
weakness of, 125, 138, 183;
personal appearance, 130; re-
lations with Narvaez, 133;
death, 134

Morales, Gaspar de, 84, 154
Morla, Francisco de, 135
Morocco, Batuta in, 9
Mundus Novus (South America),
66, 69, 143, 157, 221; see also
Chile, Peru, South America
Munoz, Fernando, 87, 89

Nahuas of Mexico, 93; religion,
97, 120; see also Aztecs, In-
dians

Naranjo, ruins of, 146
Narvaez, Panfilo de, 94, 133,
135

Navidad, La, fortress on Hayti,
48, 55-56

New Andalusia, Ojeda reaches,
68

New Spain, 104, 146, 204
Nicaragua, cacique in Nicaragua,
140, 141

Nicaragua, 92, 143, 145, 204
Nicaragua, Lake, 141, 145, 146
Nicoya, cacique, 140
Nicoya, Gulf of, 84
Nicuesa, Diego, de, 65, 66, 67, 68,
72, 81, 99, 100

Nina, The (ship), 38, 39, 44, 48,
49, 51

Nino, Andres, 139-40, 141
Nino, Pero Alonso, 39, 64, 65,
139

Nito, Cortes reaches, 151
Noche triste, 135, 190
Nombre de Dios, 142, 143, 144
Nuremberg, Behaim from, 22

Ocampo, Sebastian de, 94
Odoric of Pordenone, Friar, 5;
quoted, 5, 7

Ojeda, Alonso de, 64, 65, 66, 67,
68, 99, 169

Olid, Cristobal de, 136, 149, 184
Olintetl, cacique, 115
Olmedo, Father, 114
Oporto, Archbishops of, found
cities on Antiilia, 3
Orellana, Francisco de, 213
Organez, Rodrigo de, 207, 208,
209-10

Orinoco River, 56, 59
Orizaba, mountain peak. 111
Otumba, Cortes at, 136
Ovando, Nicolas de, 100
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernandez de,
80; quoted, 81-82

Pachacamac, Peru’s shrine to
“an unknown god,” 188, 199
Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 70,
76, 79, 90

Palenque, ruins of, 146, 151
Palmerin of England, 1-2
Palos, Columbus at, 25-26, 29-
32, 50; royal decree to, 37;

234

INDEX

Palos — C ontinued

Pinzon recruits sailors at,
38, 42; Columbus sets sail
from, 39; Cortes debarks at,
152

Panam&, Columbus in, 58, 90;
Balboa made Captain-General
of, 84; Cortes in, 141; Pizarro
asks aid from, 204; see also
Darien

Panamfi (city) founded, 142;
Pedrarias at, 143, 144, 145;
Pedrarias sails from, 155, 168;
Almagro in, 156, 158, 166;
Espinosa from, 206
Panama, Isthmus of, see Darien,
Panama

Panciaco, son of Comogre, 71
Paria, mainland of America dis-
covered at, 56; pearls found at,
64

Parita, peninsula of, 84
Parocitse, mythical monsters of
the East, 7
Pasado, Cape, 167
Pearl Coast, 64
Pearl Islands, 84, 155
Pedrarias, 99; Governor in Da-
rien, 79, 82, 83, 94; expedition,
79-81; personal characteris-
tics, 81, 140, 144-45, 211;
and Balboa, 81, 82-83, 84-86,
87-90, 139, 140; and Pizarro,
84, 88, 143, 155, 156, 169;
and Cordoba, 143, 144; and
Gonzalez, 143-44; founds
Panama, 142; good fortune of,
145; last years, 145; death
(1530), 146; Pedro de los Rios
succeeds, 145, 158
Perestrello, Bartholomew, father
of Felipa Columbus, 18-19
Perestrello, Isabel, mother of
Felipa Columbus, 19
Perez, Juan, 30, 32, 33
Persia, 5

Persian Gulf, 10; Rabbi Benjamin
at, 8, 9 (note)

Peru, 76, 77; conquest of, 71, 143,

145, 154 etseq., 198-99; scenery
of, 160; extent of, 160; topog-
raphy, 160, 161; early develop-
ment of, 162; Incas in, 162 et
seq.; roads, 163, 173; religion,
164, 196-98; agriculture, 164-
165; arts and literature, 165-66;
writing, 166; wealth of, 185-90,
192-93, 198, 200, 208; viceroy
sent to, 215; bibliography, 224;
see also Cuzco, Incas, Pizarro

Peruvians and Spaniards, 195,
201-05, 210; see also Incas,
Peru

Peten, Lake, 150

Peter Martyr, account of Colum-
bus’s voyage, 52-53; quoted,
75, 76, 77, 142

Pinta, The (ship), 38, 39, 44, 48,
49, 50

Pinz6n, Francisco, brother of
Martin, 39

Pinzon, Martin Alonso, of Palos,
30-31; and Columbus, 31, 32,
35 (note), 37, 42-43, 48;
secures recruits, 38, 42; com-
mands the Pinta, 39, 44; pros-
pects on own account, 48;
returns to Spain, 50; death,
50

Pinzon, Vicente Yanes, brother
of Martin, 39, 44, 63

Piru, see Peru

Pizarro, Francisco, 65, 199; with
Balboa, 67, 76; personal char-
acteristics, 69, 88, 154, 156;
and Pedrarias, 84, 88, 143, 155,
156, 169; captures Balboa, 89;
expedition to Peru, 145, 154
et seq.-, meets Cortes, 152;
on Island of Gallo, 157, 158,
159, 169; on Island of Gor-
gona, 159, 166, 169; at Tum-
bez, 167; returns to Spain,
168; made Governor, 168;
sufferings, 169; founds San
Miguel, 170; and Atahualpa,
171-72, 174, 175 et seq., 193-
195; at Caxamarca, 172, 174-

INDEX

23 5

Pizarro, Francisco — Continued
195; treasure, 174, 185-90,
192-93, 198; sends gold to
Spain, 190; at Cuzco, 195 et
seq.; Indian attacks on, 195,
201-05; Marques de los Atavil-
los, 200; contest with Alma-
gro, 200-01, 205-11 ; appeals to
Spanish America for aid, 204;
death, 213

Pizarro, Gonzalo, brother of
Francisco, 168, 202, 206, 207,
213

Pizarro, Hernando, brother of
Francisco, 168, 178, 183, 186,
194, 199, 207; setit to Ata-
hualpa, 175, 176; sent to

Spain, 190, 199-200, 211-12;
treasure of, 192; imprison-
ment, 200, 206, 212, 213;
commands in Cuzco, 202,
203, 205, 207, 208; personal
appearance, 208-09; causes
Almagro’s death, 211

Pizarro, Juan, brother of Fran-
cisco, 168, 202, 205

Polo, Marco, 9, 16, 23, 35 (note),
42, 99, 215

Popocatepetl (Smoking Moun-
tain), 119, 125

Porto Rico discovered, 55

Porto Santo, one of Madeiras,
18, 19

Portugal, on Behaim’s globe, 12,
23; Columbus in, 17, 18-22, 25,
28, 49-50; Behaim in, 22, 23;
adjustment of claims, 78 (note)

Prester John, 4, 8

Ptolemy, authority of Behaim,
23

Puerto Bello, 58

Puerto de la Hambre (Hunger
Harbor), 155

Puerto del Principe founded,
94

Quarequa, cacique, foe of Bal-
boa, 75

Quauhtemotzin, Aztec chief, 125,
137, 138, 150

Quetzalcoatl, Nahua god of
order, 120, 126, 127, 135,
147

Quevedo, Juan de, bishop of
Tierra Fir me, 81, 85
Quichua tribes, 163; see also
Peru, Peruvians
Quintalbor, cacique, 108
Quito, 148, 160, 170, 171, 214
Quixote, Don, 2, 199

Rabida, La, Monastery of, 25,
29, 34

Rada, Juan de, 152, 212, 214
Rastelo, Columbus anchors off,
49

Religion, devoutness of the
Spaniard, 1, 44, 106, 173;
missionaries to the East, 5-8;
as aim of Columbus, 35, 46; of
the Mayas, 93, 97; of the
Nahuas, 97-98, 120, 124, 127;
Christianity explained to In-
dians, 140-41, 181-82; of the
Peruvians, 164, 196-98
Reyella (King Island), 3, 20,
43

Rica, Isla, 78, 86
Rios, Pedro de los, 145, 158
Rojo, Cape, Grijalva at, 97
Romanticism of the Spaniard,
1-2, 173

Rome, Pinz6n in, 31, 32
Rubruck, Friar, see William of
Rubruck, Friar

Ruiz, Bartolome, 157, 159, 166,
167, 168, 191

Sabana River, see Balsas River
Sacrificios, Isla de, 96
Sacsahuaman, fortress of, 196,
203

St. Brandan, Island of, 3, 24
St. Jacques, Order of. Convent
of Saints, 18

Salinas, Plains of, battle, 208-
211

Salvador, 141, 145, 147

236

INDEX

Salvagio (Savage Island), 3, 20,
43

Samarcand, Gonzalez at, 9 (note)
San Antonio, Cape, 103
San Cristobal, Cordoba expedi-
tion sails from, 95; attempt to
stop Cortes at, 103
Sandoval, Gonzalo de, 136, 153
San Juan de Ulua, an island, 96,
106, 107, 110, 133, 167
San Juan River, Pizarro at, 156,
157, 169

San Lucar, Pedrarias expedition
from, 79

San Mateo, Bay of, discovered,
157

San Miguel, 170, 172, 176, 191
San Miguel, Gulf of, Balboa at,
74, 77, 78; Morales and Pizarro
at, 84

San Salvador founded, 94
San Salvador, an island, 45
San Sebastian, 67
Santa Fe (Spain), 32
Santa Maria (Spain), Columbus
visits pilot of, 30
Santa Maria, one of Azore Is-
lands, 49

Santa Marla, The (ship), 38, 39,
48

Santa Maria la Antigua del
Darien, 67, 70, 78, 89, 91,
142

Santangel, Luis de. Treasurer of
Aragon, 34, 35, 53
Santiago de Cuba, 94, 96, 101,
102, 103, 148
Santiago, River, 168, 200
Santo Espiritu founded, 94
Saragossa, Rabbi Benjamin
visits, 8

Sargasso Sea, 30, 31, 32
Savage Island, see Salvagio
Sea, Island in the, 3
Sea of Darkness, 2, 6, 12; see
also Atlantic Ocean
Seneca quoted, 17
Seven Cities, Isle of the, see
Antiilia

Sevilla, Columbus at, 50
Shipbuilding, by Balboa, 86,
136; by Cortes, 136
“Snake Woman” of the Aztecs,
124

Sosa, Lope de, 87, 145
Soto, Hernando de, discoverer of
the Mississippi, 80, 199; with
Cordoba, 144; with Pizarro,
169, 174, 175, 176, 178, 186,
192, 194, 201

South America, 59, 63; see also
Chile, Mundus Novus, Peru
South Sea, see Pacific Ocean
Spain, Columbus in, 25 et seq.,
50 et seq., 58-59; Balboa sends
to, 72, 74; adjustment of
claims, 78 (note); Cortes in,
152-53; the Pizarros’ relations
with, 168, 199-200, 211-12
Stone Age, see Megalithic period
Strabo, authority of Behaim,
23

Suarez, Catalina, wife of Cortes,
101, 153

Sun worship, 196-98
Sur, Mar del, see Pacific Ocean
Swallows, Island of, see Cozumel
Sypanso, see Cipangu

Tabasco, cacique, 104
Tabasco, district of, 96, 105, 106,
109, 150

Tabasco River, 104; see also
Grijalva, Rio de
Tacuba, district, 129
Tacuba Causeway, 134-35
Tafur, Pedro, 158, 166
Tagus River, Columbus enters,
49

Talavera, Hernando de, 27
Tamerlane the Great, 9 (note)
Tampu Tocco (Machu Picchu?),
162; see also Machu Picchu
Tartary, 30

Telles, Fernao, 20-21, 62
Tenochtitlan, see Mexico-Te-
nochtitlan
Teotilac, 150

INDEX

237

Terminos, Lake, Grijalva expedi-
tion at, 96
Teuhtlilli, 108, 109
Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god, 120, 127,
133

Tezcoco, Aztec settlement, 129,
133, 136

Tezcoco, Lake, 116, 117, 118-
119, 125, 136

Thibet, early travelers to, 5
Thule (Iceland), Columbus in,
17-18

Tierra Firme, 69, 142, 156; see
also Central America, Mundus
Novus

Tikal, ruins of, 146
Tindilla, Count, Peter Martyr
writes to, 52
Titicaca, Lake, 161, 195
Titicaca Valley, 162
Tlacopan, Aztec settlement, 133
Tlaloc, Nahua god of rain and
fertility, 120, 127
Tlascala, Indian communitv, 125,
128, 136

TIatelolco, see Mexico-Tenoch-
titlan

TIatelolco Pyramid, 135, 137
Toledo, Spanish court at, 152;
Pizarroat, 168

Toparca, brother of Atahualpa,
202

Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494),
78 (note)

Torres, Luis de, 47
Toscanelli, Paolo, 25 (note)
Totonac Indians and Cortes,
110 et seq.

Trade routes, 145
Trinidad, founded, 94; Velas-
quez tries to stop Cortes at,
103

Triunfo de la Cruz, 149
Trujillo (Honduras), 151
Trujillo (Spain), Pizarro a native
of, 154, 168
Tubanama, 76

Tumaco, cacique in Darien,
77

Tumbez, Pizarro and, 157, 167,
169-70, 191

Tyre, Rabbi Benjamin visits,
8

Ulua (Mexico), 98, 107, 115;

see also Mexico
Uraba, district, 65
Uraba, Gulf of, 104
Urubamba River, 162
Utatlan, native Guatemalan
settlement, 147

Valderrabano, Andres de, 87,
89

Valdes, Francisco Vasquez Coro-
nado de, 80

Valdivia, Juan de, 68, 69, 71,
72, 91-92, 93, 104
Valdivia, Pedro de, 207, 214
Vallodolid, Columbus dies at,
59

Valparaiso (Chile) founded, 214
Valparaiso (Portugal), Columbus
at, 49

Valverde, Vicente de, 180-183
Vasquez de la Frontera, Pedro,
see La Frontera
Velasco, Pedro de, 30
Velasquez, Diego, Governor of
Cuba, 94, 95, 96, 98; and
Cortes, 99, 101, 102-03, 109,
133, 149
Venezuela, 66
Venezuela, Gulf of, 65
Vera Cruz, 96, 111, 114, 136,
14S, 151

Veragua, 65, 68, 100-01
Vespucci, Amerigo, 62, 65-66;

bibliography, 221-22
Vignaud, Henry, cited, 25 (note)
Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, see
Vera Cruz

Villac Umu, medicine-man of
Cuzco, 201

Viracocha, first Inca of Peru,

1 170

238

INDEX

Watling Island, see Guanahani
West Indies, 43; chance voyages
to, 20; see also Antilles,
Cuba, Espanola

William of Caseneuve alias
Columbus, 15, 16
William of Rubruck, Friar, 5;
quoted, 7

Women, Island of, see Las
Mugeres, Island of

Xochimilico, Lake, 116, 117
Xocotlan, 125

Yucatan, 91-92, 96, 97, 104-05,
150, 223

Yztaccihuatl (White Woman),
119, 125

Zamudio, Martin, 67-68, 69,

72